Writing on the Wall
by ScopesMonkey
Summary: Having returned from Wales with John injured and a betrayal looming in the background, Sherlock is refusing cases, until both John and a baffling double murder get the better of him. [Hollowverse]
1. Chapter 1

"Good morning, John. You're up early. 'Yes, I was having troubles sleeping. Didn't want to wake you by tossing and turning.' Oh I am sorry to hear that. Anything I can do to help? 'No, it's fine, shoulder's a bit stiff, that's all.' Is that all? I _was_ rather worried because this is the third time this week it's kept you up. 'Honestly, Sherlock, it's fine. Don't worry about it. It'll be right as rain soon enough.' Right as rain? Who says that? But I _am_ glad to hear it will be fine 'soon enough' because it's not at all been plaguing you since we– got back. _Has it?_"

John set his coffee aside with a sigh, ignoring the lingering aches that had, in fact, got him up and out of bed to prevent his restlessness from spreading. Between the two of them, they weren't managing much in the way of a good night's sleep lately; he wished he could claim it was for enjoyable reasons. It wasn't staying up that was the problem – although there had been some of that – but staying asleep.

He would have considered moving back up to his old room – temporarily, just to give them each a break – only he knew precisely how that would be interpreted after the revelation about Irene Adler. He still wasn't thrilled about that, but three days alone in the wilderness thinking Sherlock was dead was enough to offset at least some of the anger.

And sleeping upstairs might make it more restful for him, but if Sherlock had a bad night, it would only make it that much worse for the detective.

"It's fine, Sherlock," he said, realizing he was echoing the one-sided conversation Sherlock had just had for them. The detective subjected him to a penetrative glare, its intensity somewhat reduced by the fact that he was in nothing but his dressing gown and a pair of purple silk boxers, and had obviously fussed hair back into something approaching reasonable before storming out of the bedroom.

"It's _not_ fine," Sherlock snapped.

"Of course it's been bothering me," John sighed. "But I've got the sling and it _will be_ fine – it just needs some time. You saw the x-rays," he added, for good measure.

Sherlock glowered at him; John let it slide right by. Unusually for him, he'd had it seen to as soon as Sherlock had mentioned it, three days after they'd returned. It had been jarring to break his fall with his left hand, the shock shuddering up his arm and rooting into his shoulder, but it wouldn't have been as bad if not for the other fall, the one he hadn't initially told Sherlock about.

He'd slipped – when on his own – and tumbled a short way down a hill. It had left bruises, but compared to everything else they'd gone through – particularly Lestrade and Sherlock, with so little food and the DI's injury – it had hardly warranted mentioning.

Until the discomfort hadn't dissipated with the slowly fading bruises and the switch from sleeping on hard, cold ground to a warm, familiar bed. Muscle strain hadn't been a surprise, but the small, dark, radiolucent line on his upper humerus had been. A stress fracture – but a small one, and nothing that warranted serious medical intervention beyond the sling, which he could remove to shower and dress, so long as he was careful.

If he'd gone by the look on Sherlock's face at the news, John might have expected a death sentence. _Thunderous_ was the best adjective he could come up with, but even it seemed pale in comparison with the darkness that had clouded the detective's features.

Even now, over a week later, Sherlock was distracted – reclusive, almost. Refusing to take cases – ostensibly because John needed looking after, which had been fine for about two days, but now that John was back at work, they both knew it was a hollow excuse. He wasn't even speaking to anyone at the Met, except for Lestrade ('He _usually_ avoids wasting my time altogether') and Hassard ('She's _moderately_ clever, I suppose'), and he wasn't taking work from them. He was still eating less than John would like, and hadn't regained all of the weight he'd lost, both in Wales and during the nine months he'd been away.

Getting him out of the flat was an odd struggle – he was wont to do it at random intervals, when he remembered that leaving would frustrate Mycroft's surveillance. To say their relationship was complicated to begin with was an understatement; now John wished he had a map to navigate all its shifting moods and nuances. He'd never seen Mycroft so genuinely concerned – terrified, really – for his brother's well being, but finding out Adler was alive had sparked something in the elder Holmes brother that had led what would have been – for anyone else – a shouting match.

For Sherlock and Mycroft, that meant cold, cutting comments that went beyond their normal barbs and feints into deeply personal, vicious remarks that had left John speechless.

If he'd ever spoken to Harry like that, she'd have rightly never talked to him again.

Justified as Mycroft's ire was, John had never expected that kind of cruelty from him, and he'd intervened, using his best captain's bark to get the elder Holmes out of his house – reminding Mycroft that _was_ his house, and that he wasn't above calling the police. By the time John managed to get Mycroft to leave, Sherlock had entrenched himself in some experiment and had refused to speak for hours.

The day after that verbal battle, Sherlock had accompanied John to work, setting himself up in the doctor's office and refusing to leave until John had seen the last of his patients. Two days later, following as many sleepless nights, he'd found Sherlock perched on the sofa, a small, velvet-lined case open on the coffee table in front of him, with a full needle resting inside of it.

Even the memory of it tightened something around his heart, but it hadn't been the drug John expected. A sedative, which he'd given to Sherlock once he'd figured out exactly what it was and double-checked the dosage. They'd slept on the sofa, Sherlock curled up half on top of John.

Now more than ever, he wished Mrs. Hudson were here. John felt like they were both adrift without her, and he'd found himself in her flat once, looking for her before realizing what he was doing. Sherlock needed her fussing and mothering, and John frankly could have used it, too. The house felt like a fraction of their home, and it didn't help that Sherlock was refusing most visitors, except the ones John imposed on him.

Without clients being allowed to call, there were fewer cases available, and those that came via email or by the post were summarily dismissed. Part of John considered that getting new tenants for Mrs. Hudson's flat would help – although he couldn't imagine that anyone would stand up to an interview with Sherlock Holmes right now.

"There's still coffee in the pot," he said, nodding toward the kitchen. "Fancy breakfast? We could go out."

"I have no desire to be dragged all over the city to satisfy your appetite," Sherlock snapped, stalking into the kitchen, the blue dressing gown billowing behind him only accenting his frame. "And stop it – that appetite doesn't need satisfying, either."

"I didn't say anything," John commented, raising an eyebrow.

"You don't have to," Sherlock replied. "Your pheromones are practically shouting it."

"You can't smell those," John pointed out. "Not consciously."

"Maybe _you_ can't," Sherlock sniffed.

"Nor can you," John said, lips twitching into a smile, because _this_ was more of a Sherlock strop, petulant but not serious. "No matter how smart you are."

Sherlock returned to flop into his chair, managing not to scald himself with hot coffee in the process, and tangled his feet around John's, long toes tugging at the cuffs of his trousers.

"Don't go to work today."

John raised his eyebrows; it was an oddly direct request from Sherlock – no fault found with John's job, no hesitant 'please' tacked on, no faked guile about anything else they could be doing.

"I have to," John sighed. "One of us has to be making money."

Sherlock's lips parted and John could see the ready retort, that Mycroft would deal with any financial details, but it was withheld as Sherlock pursed his lips, grey eyes skittering away.

"Or you could take a case," John said. "What about the one that came in the post yesterday?"

"Boring," Sherlock scoffed.

"Did you even read it?"

An envelope was plucked off a nearby table and ripped open – John refrained from commenting. Sherlock's eyes skimmed it before he tossed the paper aside.

"Boring," he repeated.

"Care to elaborate?"

With a sigh, Sherlock plucked the letter off the floor.

"'Dear Mr. Holmes, I'm so sorry to trouble you, but perhaps you could help with a matter I've never been able to resolve. Some years ago, a precious gemstone of mine went missing, and no amount of investigation has been able to trace its whereabouts. I realize that, after all this time, it's unlikely to be found, but it was very dear, and if anyone could find it, I believe it would be you. Yours,' et cetera, et cetera."

"Boring?" John asked. "What's boring about it?"

"It's been stolen and resold several times or maybe he's just an idiot and put it in the wrong safe or binned it with the rest of the rubbish."

"This kind of puzzle is right up your street, Sherlock."

"He's French," the detective muttered.

"Oh, I see. I didn't realize we were at odds with the French again."

"Don't be absurd, John. I'm not travelling all the way to France to deal with a gem that probably fell victim to some employee with sticky fingers."

"Could be interesting," John commented. "Who is he?"

"No idea," Sherlock replied. "Some Frenchman."

"Well that settles it then," John said.

"What?" Sherlock demanded, narrowed gaze honing in on John like a laser.

"One of us has to make some money," John repeated, bending to press a kiss on Sherlock's forehead as he passed, rewarded by long fingers twining into his jumper, letting go only reluctantly.

"You own this house," Sherlock pointed out.

"Yes, but with the amount you blow things up, I need to keep up with the insurance. You can stay here and screech on your violin all day."

"Screech on my–" Sherlock began, shooting John a dark glare when the doctor grinned. "No, I think I'll do better than that. I'm coming with you."

* * *

"'Morning, John," Sarah said, casting a slightly puzzled look at Sherlock, who was looming behind him like a pale, irritated shadow. They'd be cabbing it home tonight; John was sure they'd almost been kicked off the tube on the way over for Sherlock's uninterrupted assessment of the other passengers, and he didn't want to risk it again.

Or put up with it again.

"You're not ill, are you?" Sarah asked.

"No, he's his usual cheery self," John replied, ignoring the scowl aimed at the back of his head.

"I've work to do," Sherlock said coldly. John shot her a _please_-indulge-me look, which she returned with an arched eyebrow and a sigh. The brief flicker in her eyes gave away that she was doing it because of Wales; he could have kissed her in relief, if that wouldn't have given Sherlock entirely the wrong idea.

"Keep out from underfoot," Sarah warned him. "And leave the diagnosing to us, please. We know what we're about."

"So John insists on reminding me," Sherlock answered, but followed John willingly, commandeering his office computer immediately, only relinquishing it reluctantly so John could check his patient schedule.

The patient load kept him busy, but he looked in on Sherlock whenever he had a moment; the detective seemed immersed in some internet research, and John privately hoped it was about something other than Irene Adler. For all of Sherlock's protestations that his attention wasn't her goal, and she didn't have it anyway, the doctor was fairly certain she had a pretty prominent place in that incredible mind of his.

He wanted Sherlock to work, of course, but this… John wasn't sure it _was_ work. He'd seen Sherlock give it his all – literally – for a case. Jump off of a roof, fake his own death, live as a shadow for nine months, cut off from everyone he loved and everything he knew.

The motivations behind that were understandable. He still wasn't thrilled about how it had turned out, but he understood the necessity. Right now, he didn't know what the reasons behind this case – if he could call it that – were.

He wondered if any of them did.

In these moments, John longed for life to go back to normal. To rewind everything back to the day before Moriarty broke into the Tower, to let them settle back into their routine and their ignorance of what was to come.

_Snap out of it, Watson_, he told himself, giving his head a sharp shake as he left an exam room, dropping the updated chart at the desk. It was too easy to dwell on the negative, and let the positive go unremarked. The night before last, they'd both slept well, and John had awoken first to watch as Sherlock drifted back to consciousness, grace and intellect flowing back into limbs and digits before he even opened his eyes.

That was something. No one else in the world got to see that.

"John."

The closeness of Sherlock's voice matched his sudden presence; John had been alone then immediately hadn't been, the detective towering over him, expression verging on a glare.

"Sherlock. Yeah."

"I'm going to the shops. To get a few things."

"Um– all right."

"From the shops."

"Yeah, I did get that the first time," John said. "What things?"

"Things. Things we need. Milk."

"I don't think we need milk."

"Of course we need milk, we always need milk, I'll get milk."

"Sherlock–"

"I'll be home before you," the detective assured him, voice carrying over his shoulder as he strode away. "Mrs. Levins has a gall bladder infection, not kidney stones, and needs to stop treating herself with herbal 'remedies'. I'll get biscuits, too, of course."

John passed his good hand over his face when the door to the waiting room swung closed behind the detective, and took a moment to lean against the wall before seeking Sarah out.

"Can I have ten minutes?" he asked. "Shoulder." The white lie made him feel somewhat guilty, especially at the warm concern on her face.

"Of course. Do you need the sling adjusted?"

"No, it's fine," John replied with a slight smile. "Thanks." He ducked into his mercifully empty office, not even bothering with the computer – whatever Sherlock had been doing would be untraceable by his standards. The sigh of relief at getting off his feet and propping his left arm – carefully – on his desk wasn't feigned.

He pulled out his mobile and sent a quick text to Lestrade.

_You've got to get him a case. Something. Anything._

_I'd love to_, Lestrade sent back. _Can't talk him round to it. Everything I've got is either boring or obvious. Or both._

John heaved a sigh, the exhalation ending on a slight wince at the twinge in his shoulder.

_Haven't really got anything up his street right now, either_, Lestrade added.

_No one has_, John thought, drumming his fingers against the desk. The chime of a new text distracted him – coming from Mycroft almost tempted him to ignore it.

_Could you please convince Sherlock to stop hacking into secured government databases?_

_I doubt it, _John replied. _He's got to do something._

_Finding Irene Adler is not his purview._

_You're the one who wanted him to in the first place._

_And now he needs to stop_. John could almost hear the aggrieved sigh dripping from Mycroft's message.

_You can't control everything he does._

_Someone's got to, John._

He drummed his fingers on the desk again, chewing on his lower lip, then replied:

_We've decided to have a baby._

Predictably, his phone rang less than ten seconds later.

"_Please_ tell me you're joking. Baker Street is no place for a child."

"Making a point, actually," John said.

"And what is this rather poorly made point?"

"That he can make his own bloody choices. That you can't manipulate all the outcomes."

"That's what I _do_, John."

"Then why in the bloody hell did you introduce them in the first place?" John snapped. "For god's sake, she's Jim Moriarty in heels! Maybe _slightly_ less dangerous – although I'm really starting to rethink that assessment now. What did you think would happen, Mycroft?"

"I _thought_ he'd do the job given to him. As he always does. Or used to do, at any rate."

"Yeah, well, he's not you, is he?"

"More's the pity."

John swallowed hard, resisting comment.

"Do you know why police officers aren't permitted to work cases that connect to their personal lives or to their partners?" Mycroft asked, as if casually enquiring if John had noted rain in the weather forecast. "That kind of emotional connection can be messy. Mistakes can be made."

"Good thing you handed off the search to someone else when we were missing then, isn't it?" John demanded. He heard Mycroft sigh, but knew he'd hit a mark – Sherlock's brother hadn't been willing to trust anyone else with that investigation.

"Out of everyone you know, Mycroft, you _know_ he's the best person to find her. He understands how she thinks."

"I know quite a lot of people, John."

"And it's still true," John retorted.

"Unfortunately, she also seems to know how _he_ thinks," Mycroft said.

_Maybe not as much as we all thought_, John mused, pursing his lips to keep the comment to himself.

"And he's not made any significant progress."

"No more than you."

"Now how would you know that?"

"Because if you had, you wouldn't be obliquely asking me about his. Leave it, Mycroft. _I'm_ not worried about where his loyalties lie." He rung off before Mycroft could say anything more – or detect the lie.

It wasn't exactly a lie, not entirely. If really pressed, John trusted Sherlock to make the right choice. He'd learned his lesson.

Absolutely.

Almost definitely.

Probably.

With a deep sigh, John pushed himself back to his feet, put on his best sympathetic smile, and went back to work.


	2. Chapter 2

"So… you went shopping."

"Yes. Obvious."

"And bought milk."

"Yes."

"And biscuits."

"Yes."

John paused, lips pursed, drumming the fingers of his right hand against the wall where the corridor arched into the living room.

"And… pillows."

"Mm. Yes."

"Rather a lot of pillows, actually."

"Twelve," Sherlock said.

"Yeah, I can count."

"Oh good, so nice to know," the detective replied without opening his eyes or shifting from the straight line his body drew from head to toe, somehow precariously propped in his chair.

"Sherlock… why?"

"Why?" Sherlock asked, finally deigning to open one eye a crack. "Why what?"

"Why did you decide we needed twelve new pillows on the bed?"

"Not _we_, John. You."

"What am I going to do with twelve pillows?"

The sigh he was expecting didn't come; Sherlock bounced to his feet instead, wine-red dressing gown billowing gently as he grasped John's right hand nimbly, spinning him and tugging him along.

"Sit. No, other side."

"This is _my_ side," John protested, already perched on the length of mattress closest to the door.

"It's a bed, John, not a battlefield."

John's lips twitched and he resisted commenting; the first few nights _had_ been a battle, and the ground he'd gained had been hard won against Sherlock's tendency to sprawl long limbs everywhere and take up as much space as he could. Even now, John was more likely than not to awake half covered.

Or he had been, until the sling. His legs were still fair game, but there was never any extra weight on his upper body.

"Sit. Stay still."

John raised his eyebrows at the commands but Sherlock's eyes were narrowed in concentration as he removed the sling carefully. He'd developed a knack for that immediately; John could remove it and refit it himself, but with a lot more effort, and usually didn't bother if Sherlock was available.

"It causes you some discomfort to sleep with this on – very likely the reason you're not sleeping as well or as deeply as you normally might. Sleeping on your back aggravates it, better to sleep on your side, but with the sling, that's not ideal either. A strain on your right shoulder, and mild strain on the left even with the sling, from the pull on your forearm. Can't sleep on your left side now, of course, nor you stomach. Not that you're ever inclined to do either. Left side would risk bothering your shoulder even when it's well, and your stomach leaves you feeling exposed and vulnerable."

John raised an eyebrow when Sherlock's mind seemed to catch up with his words, and the detective cleared his throat.

"Habit from the army," he continued, grey eyes narrowing slightly at the smile that tugged on John's lips. "As is the preference not to sleep with your back to the door. This, however, won't work if you're on 'your' side, as you call it, because of the high probability the pillows would fall to the floor."

"What, exactly, is 'this'?" John asked.

"You don't move when you're sleeping – not appreciably anyway," Sherlock said. "Legs up, sit back." John did as bidden, watching as two of the new pillows were adjusted, the detective's gaze darting between them and John.

"Good. Now, on your side, lie down, I think I've got the proper set up… yes, perfect." John's arm, held carefully in Sherlock's hands, was lowered gingerly onto the pillows, adjusted minutely until he was comfortable. Two more pillows were shoved between the ones holding his arm and the headboard, almost standing up until Sherlock stuffed them down with a satisfied look that made John smile.

"Good?" Sherlock asked.

"Perfect," John replied.

"Another can be added if they become deflated."

"That accounts for five of them," John said. "What about the other seven?"

"Sofa, your chair, and back ups."

"You thought this through."

"I _am_ a genius," Sherlock sniffed.

"Really? Hadn't ever noticed."

"Well, you wouldn't, would you?" Sherlock sniffed, refusing to take the bait. John grinned, easing himself up to sitting with his partner's help. Sherlock fussed with the sling beyond what was strictly necessary; John stilled the movement by curling his right hand over one of the two fluttering at his shoulder. Sherlock's eyes caught his, almost hesitant, checking for discomfort or pain, but John smiled, moving the palm to his lips and kissing it lightly.

"This is–" He released Sherlock's hand, giving his head a small shake. "Thanks."

Sherlock's lips twitched, a hesitant near smile; John tangled his hand into dark curls, drawing them together, letting lips linger. The slight tilt of Sherlock's head deepened the kiss, a long body shifted to pattern itself around John's. The hand resting on the curve of his lower back wasn't exactly casual – not with the way Sherlock's ring finger was worming a bit of space between John's shirt and his jeans. A leg hooked over his, crooks of their knees linked, keeping them together, upright.

A thumb skimmed beneath his shirt, brushing bare skin, the faint scrape of teeth caught his lower lip – and Sherlock gave a harsh, irritated sigh when the buzzer broke through the sound of warm breathing.

"This one's on you," John said, chuckling at the glower shot his way.

"Honestly, don't these people have _any_ sense?"

"Any other time and you'd be complaining it's late. Come on," he said, clapping his good hand on Sherlock's knee. "I'll get the plates."

* * *

It almost felt like a normal evening – what passed as normal for them – with Sherlock picking apart the plot of the programme on the telly as he picked at his food, occasionally jabbing his fork toward the screen to emphasize a point. With the light and the warmth in the flat, it would have been easy to overlook the things just beneath the surface, but John could feel them creeping up on him, a chill seeping through the cracks.

"Come on," he said, pushing himself to his feet, Sherlock's gaze sliding smoothly toward him with the hint of a question. "We're going out."

"Are we?" the detective replied, making no move to stand.

"Yep." John grabbed the empty plate Sherlock had abandoned on the floor and deposited both in the kitchen before summarily banishing the characters on the television.

"I _was_ watching that," Sherlock pointed our sardonically.

"You had the plot figured out in the first five seconds."

"Three actually. Where are you planning on going?"

"Not me, we," John said, reversing his partner's earlier words. "Out."

"Yes, you did say."

"To a pub. Somewhere close. Walking distance. _My_ walking distance," he added, aware that Sherlock considered the entire city to be walkable, given the right amount of time.

"May I ask why?" Sherlock enquired, unfolding his long body in a slow, eloquent movement that John took the time to appreciate.

"That," John said, waving his good hand toward Sherlock; the detective glanced down at himself. "I'm going to get a little drunk and encourage you to take advantage of me."

"We would do that just as easily here – more easily in fact," Sherlock pointed out, a small smile creeping onto his lips.

"It's more fun if we go out. Means you have to behave."

"Does it really?" Sherlock was suddenly in his space, close enough that John could feel the heat radiating from him, and the way he dipped his voice chipped at John's resolve.

"It does," John replied, winding a scarf around his neck one-handed. A slow smile spread across Sherlock's lips; John held himself firm, drawing on years of army training and seven weeks as Sherlock's partner.

"I do like a good challenge," the detective murmured, leaning down slightly – not close enough to bring their lips together, but enough to suggest he might. "Right," he said brightly, pulling away to John's mild sigh of relief. "Get your coat. We haven't got all night."

* * *

They were drawing the occasional stare, even in the lowered lighting of the street lamps; with their faces plastered all over the news for three days, it wasn't entirely surprising. Sherlock's return from the dead had garnered them each attention, and vanishing abruptly in the middle of a murder investigation – along with a DI from Scotland Yard – had only added fuel to the fire. John wanted to hunch down in his coat, but that meant making his shoulder even more uncomfortable. Besides, he didn't want to give anyone the satisfaction. He was going for a pint with his partner, that was all.

Even if he did catch Sherlock glancing over his shoulder at the street. It was only when the detective turned, pausing mid-stride, that John brought it up.

"Are we being followed?"

"We're always being followed," Sherlock murmured in reply.

"By someone other than Mycroft, I mean."

"It's– no. I don't think so, no."

"You don't think so? You're not inspiring much confidence."

"I know they're there," Sherlock replied. "So it's unlikely to be Mary or–"

_Or her_, John thought.

"Unless they want us to know," he pointed out.

"Yes," Sherlock said, pursing his lips.

"Well, sod them," John said, earning a slightly startled glance from his partner. "We're out for a drink. We can topple international criminals later." A quick smile crossed Sherlock's lips, sparking a gleam in his grey eyes. "We're here."

They found a small table near the back where John could rest his bad arm, and Sherlock lingered at the bar, waiting on their drinks. John took the opportunity to appreciate the view, entirely unsurprised when his glance was returned by hooded grey eyes. He grinned, shaking his head, earning a cocked eyebrow in return; it was far too early – they hadn't even had one drink – but it wouldn't stop Sherlock from starting to wear him down.

The glance away, back at the bartender, reminded John of the set up at the club where they'd been looking for Sebastian Moran. It wasn't hard to remember the flash of jealousy he'd felt then – and he was only mildly surprised to feel it again. Not for this bartender herself, but he saw some resemblance to Adler – a superficial one: long, dark hair pulled up and away from her face.

He tried to quell the sensation – the last thing they needed was Sherlock reading it on his face and having it start a row. She wasn't here and certainly didn't need an invitation into their relationship. _Mostly_, John thought_, because she goes wherever she pleases_.

Still he was resolved not to let it get the better of him. Her. Mycroft. The entire situation.

Before Wales, he hadn't given Sherlock's thoughts or feelings about her any consideration, and wouldn't have worried about it if anyone else had brought it up.

Of course, before Wales, he'd been happily ignorant about the fact that she wasn't dead. It had made him wonder – more than once – if she'd had any role in Sherlock staging his own suicide, or if she'd helped him in any way afterwards.

_But that wouldn't make sense_, he reminded himself. Not given the way Sherlock had reacted to realizing she'd been behind the abduction – as if her renewed presence in his life had caught him entirely off guard.

It _had_ taken him three days to figure out that she'd behind it, after all. John doubted it would have taken so long if she'd been involved in the faked suicide.

Sherlock had said as much.

_Anyway, why would she help Sherlock and then do this?_ Of course, _this_ had apparently not been about them, but about gaining access to something Mycroft was guarding carefully. Whatever that was, they still had no idea – or Mycroft wasn't saying, at any rate.

_Stop it, John_, he sighed to himself, eyes skimming over the other pub patrons. There were a few people seated by themselves, two at the bar, one bent over a book at a table, but most where in couples or small groups, enjoying each other's company.

He could do the same. With deliberate decision, he shelved his worries as Sherlock strode back toward him, two beers in hand. One was slid across the table to John and the detective slouched gracefully into a chair, sitting in an apparently casual but entirely deliberate way that exposed his lean body to John's view and no one else's.

"You'll get yourself arrested, looking like that."

"Like what?" Sherlock asked, feigning innocence as he sipped his beer. "There's no law against a man sitting in a pub."

"The way you sit, there should be. Lucky for you, I'm immune."

"Do you really?" Sherlock murmured.

"Mm," John replied, taking a swig of his own drink, doing his best to ignore the foot that hooked around his ankle.

"Funny thing about immunity," Sherlock said, sitting forward – without dislodging his foot – and leaning into John's space, not _quite_ close enough to really be suggestive. Unless one could see his face.

John had a splendid view of that – the slight quirk of lips, the gleam of promise in Sherlock's grey eyes.

"If you're not careful to maintain it, it can just… fade away."

"Can it really?" John asked.

"Oh yes," Sherlock assured him.

"Good thing I condition myself on a regular basis."

"Of course, there are some things that one can't develop an immunity to." An arm draped lazily over the back of his chair brought Sherlock's hand close enough to John's shoulder for an index finger to trace small, apparently innocent patterns against John's arm.

"We're in a pub, Sherlock."

"Kind of you to remind me, it might have slipped my mind otherwise."

"Happens a lot to you, does it?" John asked.

"You'd be surprised," Sherlock murmured, lips pulling into a smile against the rim of his glass. "There are certain things I am in constant need of reinforcing. Sounds, especially."

"Is that so?"

"Echoic memory relies largely on external repetition," Sherlock agreed, catching John's chin between a thumb and forefinger, closing the distance between them even more – but not enough for John's taste. "You make some _very_ intriguing sounds, John. I have to make sure my catalogue is correct."

"You– have a catalogue?"

"For everything. Believe me. Including that little hint of expression that tells me you're regretting your decision to leave the flat."

"It's only one pint," John pointed out. "Then we can go back."

"No, I don't think so," Sherlock said, sitting back again, lips curling upward at the edges. "I'd rather stay a while. Have some… _fun_."

* * *

"Why are we here?"

"Well, we're both police officers. Generally when a crime's been committed, we police officers are called in to look for clues and try and solve the damn thing."

"Thanks," Hassard said, rolling her eyes as Lestrade grinned, bundling his hands into his pockets against the night chill. "All this time on the force, and you know, I never was really sure about that. So good of you to explain. I _mean_, why are you and I both here? What's so important that it needs two DIs?"

"The Met's decided it needs Scotland Yard's finest on this one," Lestrade replied.

"Well that explains me," Hassard said with a wicked grin. "How about you?"

"Thought I'd give a rookie DI a bit of a leg up. Show you the ropes. Lend a hand."

Hassard raised her eyebrows, a smile quirking on her lips.

"Bet she never talked to you like that when you were her partner," Donovan commented, coming up behind them from the security cordon.

"I didn't," Hassard agreed. "Then again, he'd already been a sergeant once before."

There was a snort from Donovan, incompletely quelled by the hand covering her mouth, and Hassard gave Lestrade her best angelic smile – which he had to admit, was pretty damn good.

"I'll reassign the two of you if you aren't careful," he growled.

"You don't have that kind of power," Hassard replied cheerfully. "But really, what have we got?"

"Richard Douglas – that's _Sir_ Richard Douglas, former RAF pilot, successfully climbed Everest and some place called Lhotse – oh and Kilimanjaro last summer, apparently – successful CFO, married, three kids, two at Oxford and one a practicing physician, found dead in his office by one of the building's security officers. Apparent heart attack – or that's the guard's guess."

"Two DIs and a murder squad for an apparent heart attack?"

"'Apparent' being the operative word here," Lestrade said.

"Yeah, I got that, but still."

"Sat upright at his desk like he was still alive. Not propped up. Not slumped over. Just dead."

"Right," Hassard sighed. "Let's see what we've got."

* * *

She met Lestrade's eyes before they both returned their gazes to the body sat – and it was sitting, nice and neat, like a still video image – at the desk in the rather lavish office that overlooked the river in the distance.

"Who found him?" Hassard asked, glancing over her shoulder at the necessary crowd that had gathered and were awaiting their instructions.

"I did, ma'am. Kevin Singer. I work nights in security here."

"And you're absolutely sure it was Sir Richard Douglas you found?"

"Yes, ma'am, of course," he replied, brow furrowing slightly.

"Chief financial officer, experienced mountaineer, father of three adult children?" she asked, just to be sure.

"Um, yes, ma'am."

"Can you explain to us, then, why he doesn't look a day over twenty-five?"

* * *

John stirred slightly, aware that a momentary cold spot on the other side of the bed was being replaced by a warm body as Sherlock slipped back between the sheets.

"I didn't mean to wake you," the detective murmured in the darkness.

"S'all right," John replied drowsily. "Everything okay?"

"Everything's fine," Sherlock said, lips warm against John's forehead. "Go back to sleep."


	3. Chapter 3

It was his phone buzzing gently that woke him – alone again – in the morning; John managed to quell the instinct to reach out with his left hand just in time to avoid straining anything. Sleeping without the sling was a relief, but he'd have to get used to keeping himself in check.

Sitting up, cradling his left arm gingerly, took time. Long enough for him to miss the call.

Lestrade's number on the screen heartened him somewhat, although he wondered if he shouldn't bother getting his hopes up.

He refitted himself with his sling before ringing the DI's number, familiar dull ache settling across his right shoulder where the strap rested.

"John, morning, sorry to wake you." There was a pause on the other end of the line, a hesitation broken by a quiet sigh. "Listen, we really need his help."

"Have you tried asking him?" John enquired – and he had a suspicion now as to why Sherlock had been briefly out of bed in the middle of the night.

"He said no, but this is… complicated."

"Complicated how?"

It was too early in the morning to listen to Lestrade explain – try to explain – the mysterious death of some high placed corporate executive, followed by his even more mysterious disappearance from a building replete with security cameras, and subsequent replacement of his corpse with another, younger one whose identity and relationship to the original victim they had yet to ascertain.

"Bad enough when we have a missing person," Lestrade finished. "Missing corpses? That's nothing but fodder for the tabloids."

John sighed, wishing he had a free hand to run over his face. It was right up Sherlock's street – three crimes rolled into one, not to mention a double locked-room mystery.

"I'll try. Can't promise anything, but I'll see what I can do."

"The faster the better. We're already getting pressure from the top, and it's been less than six hours."

"I'll see what I can do," John repeated, and rung off.

For a moment, all he could do was sit on the edge of the bed chewing his lower lip and wondering what the hell he would say. There were any number of arguments he could make, but approaching any of them the wrong way would lock Sherlock down tighter than a bank vault.

And he understood why Sherlock was baulking.

But refusing cases, giving into paranoia about who might be behind them… John didn't like where that could so easily lead. Better to be subjected to the kind of stony silences only Sherlock could deliver than watch the detective driving himself slowly mad with inactivity.

John shuffled into his bathrobe, unable to knot it, and padded into the living room. Sherlock was bent over some experiment at the kitchen table, his blow torch resting worryingly close to his microscope. John decided not to comment on it, and set about making himself tea – which made Sherlock leap up, fussing him into a chair, to take charge of their morning beverages.

"I've already said no," the detective said, dropping himself back into his chair, cup of tea immediately forgotten as he returned his focus to whatever it was under the microscope lens.

"I know. Greg said."

"Good," Sherlock murmured, and John withheld a sigh, exhaling slowly instead. He let a moment slip past, then another, sipping his tea as if he'd dropped the subject – but he could see by the lines of Sherlock's shoulders that the detective was waiting for more.

"Do you know what Mary did?" John asked. Sherlock deigned to glance up, giving him a scowl and an impatient sigh.

"Forged an utterly false identity for herself so thoroughly and expertly that even Mycroft didn't see through it," he began, sitting back to tick points off on his fingers. "Secured her place in your life by winning your sister's love and your affections, successfully ran a very organized and efficient criminal enterprise centred around London's elite gamblers while convincing everyone that she was a lackey for Sebastian Moran and that he, in turn, was working for Moriarty – only to be the one in charge of the entire organization. Murdered Moran because he was too troublesome but managed to keep that knowledge from becoming public. Set Jim Moriarty up to end his own life when _he_ became too problematic. Oh, and killed Ronald Adair with a single shot from the street outside his house. Among many, many other things, I'm sure."

John nodded, taking another sip of his tea.

"Yeah," he agreed. "But I mean, do you know what she did to you?"

"She didn't do anything to me, John – unless you consider her set up with Moriarty as also aimed at me, although I doubt that was her motive. She just wanted him gone. I was a tool to help her get what she wanted – so yes, I suppose, she did do that to me, but Moriarty had to be stopped regardless."

John nodded vaguely; he hadn't considered that before, but it was a good point. He added it to his mental list of things he held against Mary. He could really have gone without those nine months thinking his best friend had jumped to his death right in front of him.

"That's still not what I meant, though," he said. "Do you remember what you said to me about her, after it was all over and she'd told you that you'd never see her again? You told me she wouldn't come after us, but that didn't mean we couldn't go after her."

"Yes," Sherlock said, voice stiffening as his jaw tensed. "I remember."

"Sherlock, if we hadn't got that videotape from the club, how long do you think it would have taken you to figure out that she hadn't been abducted?"

"I don't know, John," Sherlock snapped. "There are several viable options, each of them contingent on the information we had versus the information we needed to learn–"

"Exactly," John sighed. "And in all of those, is there at least one in which we'd _still_ be trying to find her under the assumption that Moran kidnapped her?"

"Possibly, but I don't see what the point of this is–"

"My point is that she conned you. Completely. You and Mycroft both," John added, ignoring the faint flare of nostrils at Mycroft's name. "There were little traces – like the footprints and the blood – but we saw those the way she wanted us to. She fooled you, she put you on completely the wrong path, and if we hadn't got hold of that video, we might never have known that."

"Yes," Sherlock said, voice clipped. "I'm aware."

"But you still want to find her. You know she's out there, you know she could be behind anything, you know she's watching, but you don't want to see her win. You started chasing her immediately, because _you_ wanted her stopped."

He put down his cup gently, but kept his good hand encircled around it, keeping something small between them that Sherlock would see as familiar and normal.

"It took you five minutes smoking a cigarette after we got back from Wales to figure out that it was Irene Adler who'd kidnapped us, and you haven't taken a single case since then."

John saw the shut down: grey eyes suddenly clouded, expression hardening with only the barest shift of muscle.

"This is what you _do_, Sherlock. You invented this job."

"And I hardly need someone telling me when to do it," Sherlock snapped, chair scraping predictably across the floor as he pushed himself to his feet.

"But telling you when not to do it?" John asked, and the question froze his partner as he began to move. "Since when do you let _anyone_ get away with that?" He made the meaning obvious: Mycroft had tried to prevent Sherlock from continuing with the Adair investigation – and that was only one recent interference.

Grey eyes slid back to him, verging on dangerously darkened; John shook his head and took care to keep his body language open.

"She can't be behind everything, Sherlock. Neither of them can be, really. But if she is– _if_," he stressed when Sherlock drew a breath to interject, "you beat her last time. Why not this time? If this leads back to her, well…"

He shrugged both shoulders, winced at the sudden snap of pain down his left arm. Sherlock was crouched in front of him before John even remembered to exhale the breath he'd instinctively held. He took a couple more slow ones for good measure as Sherlock's eyes raked over his face, and focused on the warm points of contact of hands resting on his thighs.

"Plus I'm really bloody pissed about this," John said, gesturing vaguely to his injured shoulder with his good hand. "Once was more than enough for a lifetime."

Something else passed through Sherlock's eyes – something John couldn't put a name to.

"Double murder, missing corpses, locked rooms… You _live_ for this sort of case, Sherlock."

"I'll get your painkillers," Sherlock said, pushing himself back to his feet, avoiding John's eyes. A glass of water was plunked down next to him and John pursed his lips against a sigh as Sherlock vanished from the kitchen, long-legged stride purposeful but tense.

_You're Sherlock Holmes,_ John thought, gazing at the empty archway into the living room. _Winning is what you _do.

Minutes crept by, drawing with them a slow realization that Sherlock probably wasn't getting painkillers. The ache in John's shoulder had settled and deepened, becoming increasingly uncomfortable, but he fidgeted, hesitating against moving.

It might make things better to go after his errant partner – but it might only make everything worse.

He closed his eyes, rubbing them with his good hand, half cursing his stupidity. Well, he'd needed to say it, hadn't he? And it was all true, no matter that Sherlock was choosing to ignore it.

He could try again another day. Something smaller, maybe. More frivolous. Another repressed sigh at that – those cases brought in money, but they did little to challenge Sherlock's intellect, to make him feel like he was clever and outpacing everyone, like he was _himself_. Brilliant. Caustic. Insightful.

Right.

The click of plastic against the table made him snap his eyes open; Sherlock had returned so quietly John hadn't heard him. Eyes darted to the bottle of ibuprofen that had been deposited beside him, and John fought down a startled reaction when a soft bundle of clothing was dumped unceremoniously into his lap.

"What's this?" he managed.

"Clothing," Sherlock replied. "You haven't got work today, but you'll still need to get dressed. You can't go to a crime scene in your pyjamas."

* * *

"Where's the body?"

"Bart's," Lestrade replied.

Sherlock stopped. Stared. Hands pressed together almost thoughtfully but eyes raking over the DI, looking for some hint of having him on. Lestrade shrugged, hands in the pockets of his jeans – not a conciliatory gesture but a practical one. Sherlock narrowed his eyes, but the glare did nothing to make the DI look abashed in any way.

"Didn't think you were coming."

"What's been done to it?"

"Him," John corrected. Sherlock wrinkled his nose – unnecessary semantics but he took the correction with a curt nod; there was that familiar warning look in John's blue eyes. He had no desire for reprimands, not right here, not right now. Balanced on the edge of the case – of the _possibilities_ and– _there_ was that feeling of elation when Lestrade gave his head a shake.

"Fingerprints," he said. "DNA. Dental records. Trying to get some idea who is he, where he's from."

"No one recognized him?" John asked.

Obvious. Sherlock turned away, half tuning out the negative answer. Surprise had driven the question more than actual curiosity. He took the moment to text Molly and have her delay any post-mortem examinations. Lestrade would have told her to do the same, but it bore repeating.

He kept an ear on the conversation behind him. Lestrade filling John in on the details. Important for anything the DI might have caught that could be telling. Position of the body would have been so informative, he'd need photographs but for now… The man who belonged in this office, not the younger imposter left dead in his chair. Missing, but his familiar haunts would mean little, corpses didn't have preferences.

But living people had enemies. Mostly minor, and being stabbed in the back was more often a figure of speech, not an actual blade – but Douglas… Accomplishments splashed across the scene – office – like bright stars: photos from the tops of Everest and Lhotse, others from Kilimanjaro. Service medals, old photographs of Douglas with comrades-in-arms. Pride of the place on the desk: dated photograph of himself with his children – now adults, but younger then, teenagers, no sullen looks, all smiles, a moment of family unity if not faked then at least projected for the camera. Caught in time, refusing to divulge the messy humanity behind it – likes, dislikes, grudges, passions, preferences, ticks. All the little tells and hints that made them real. Alive.

Douglas wasn't alive – or at least the security guard hadn't thought him so. Possibility of error, impossible to judge until he'd met the man – either of the men. A corpse would be a corpse regardless, but all he had to go on was an unknown, the word of a stranger. Never reliable, that. Panic, forgotten training in the face of instinct that was eons old.

Playing dead was a different game, but murder itself… no shortage of potential culprits here. Muddied the waters of the suspect pool.

He would clear it out soon enough.

Douglas had been found at his desk, and the imposter corpse the same. A focal point – chair dislodged, of course, to move the body. Faint impression of gurney wheels on the carpet (expensive but industrial, recently replaced, well-maintained). Sherlock circled behind the L-shape slowly, eyes alighting on the organized chaos. Not a mess, not like John described Sherlock's work areas (John and Lestrade watching now, DI with arms folded, John unable to do so, flexing the fingers of his right hand against impatience).

Computer with monitors on the section facing the door; the rest of the work kept contained to the surface to Douglas' left. The work was organized, piles and patterns discernable at a glance: what was in progress, what was priority, what had been newly delivered and was yet to be dealt with. Trinkets littering the rest of the space – aside from the family photo, small items picked up during travels, accrued over a lifetime. Model RAF aeroplane. Small carved elephant (Kilimanjaro trip), various souvenirs from Tibet and Nepal (check into where he'd trained for those climbs – and with whom). Pens – motley assortment: trade fairs, promotional packets, accidentally stolen from others, accumulated by those left in his office. Pencils used, erasers smudged with graphite.

Right handed, given the location of the small, hand thrown pottery vessel holding writing utensils.

"Meaning behind everything – except the pens – except the fountain pen, gift from firm for ten year service, not cheap, used, but carefully. Desk kept clean, dusted on a regular basis, but him not by a service, too much attention to detail, photograph where he could see it working on either side– coffee mug _not_ his– chair."

Snap of the fingers, pointing to one of the two facing the desk.

"What?" Lestrade and John asked in unison.

"John, sit." Puzzled expression in John's blue eyes; Sherlock stopped, pursing his lips slightly. The doctor's stance was too rigid, even for him. Holding back – or trying to – from pain.

"Please. It will help your shoulder."

"What do you mean about the coffee cup not being his?" Lestrade demanded as John took a seat – reluctantly. Sherlock's eyes tracked him, gauging and evaluating pain; the ibuprofen had worked, but not as well as either of them had hoped. Slow, deliberate movements were safe enough but sharp ones, like a shrug, weren't.

John's lips twitched when he sank into the seat, not quite a smile, more an acknowledgement, or almost a thanks.

"The mug?" he prompted.

"Everything on the desk has meaning. Family, travels, past or present career. Not the mug. Black, no insignia, no patterns. Impersonal. And clean."

"If he keeps his things clean, why shouldn't the mug be?," Lestrade asked.

"No hints of staining on the interior, no fingerprints on the handle or the body. There _was_ a mug here – coaster – but not this one. It's been wiped clean, carefully. Probably brand new. Something in _his_ mug someone didn't want us to see. Makes his own coffee," Sherlock nodded at the small grinder and press on the table against the wall. "Refined taste, too – imported and very specific. Efficient delivery system, no need to break in and kill him. Deliver the weapon and have him do it himself."

"I'll get a forensics unit back," Lestrade sighed. "See if we can't get anything off of it."

Waste of time, but necessary and it wasn't _his_ time being wasted.

"Bart's next, I think," Sherlock said. "Should make your day, Lestrade. At least one body there will be pleased to see you."


	4. Chapter 4

"Change of plans," Sherlock said, leaning forward to catch the cabbie's attention. "Baker Street, please."

"What?" John asked. "Why? Anything you've forgotten Molly will have at the morgue."

"We're not going for me," Sherlock replied, sitting back as the cab changed direction. "We're going for you."

"I don't need anything from home."

"You need to _be_ home, John. Your shoulder–"

"It's _fine_, Sherlock."

"Repetition of a delusion doesn't make it true," Sherlock replied with infuriating reasonableness. "You've been holding yourself stiffly all day, which does nothing to help with the muscle strain, and you're paler than normal. Better to rest – as so you're fond of insisting when our roles are reversed."

"What about the body?" John asked.

"It will still be a body whether or not you're there to examine it, John. Molly can act as a stand in for your expertise if need be – and she's already examined it, at least superficially."

"It's really not–" John began, interrupted when Sherlock spoke over him as though he hadn't said anything at all.

"Here we are. Out you go, John. Don't bother waiting," he told the cab driver. "I'll catch another. Come on, quickly."

With a defeated sigh, John eased himself out of the car, letting Sherlock unlock the front door. The detective kept his pace slow on the stairs and John was tempted to drag his heels even more than he already was. To see if Sherlock would notice.

Of course he would.

"I'm really all right to go," he tried again once inside their flat – and was predictably ignored as Sherlock vanished into the bathroom, re-emerging with an adhesive heating patch and ibuprofen, and shooing John onto the sofa.

The sling was removed so John's jumper and shirt could come off; Sherlock moved with a focused grace that was almost disappointing. The cases would always take priority – John preferred it that way, because that was Sherlock – but he'd grown used to causing at least a little bit of distraction when he was half naked.

There was _something_ this time, but it was all practiced efficiency, Sherlock playing the role of nurse expertly.

"Two ibuprofen every four hours," Sherlock said, as if John didn't know – or couldn't be trusted to remember. "With the right amount of care, you should avoid any additional damage."

John almost snorted; this from a man who considered sword fights or jumping from roofs as occupational hazards. He wondered if he could use this against Sherlock the next time the detective was injured.

Probably not.

"I'll text you should I need your expertise," Sherlock assured him, bending for a swift kiss, and then he was gone, disappearing down the stairs in a swish of heavy black wool.

John sat silently, at the ready, watching the door for several minutes until he realized he was waiting for Sherlock to come back. To bound up the stairs like he had that very first day, unconcerned by the cane that slowed John down, dragging the doctor irrevocably in his wake.

But this was different. His shoulder injury was one of damaged muscle and bone, not a psychological manifestation. The pain then had been just as real as it was now, but Sherlock wouldn't challenge it. That wouldn't help the problem – and they both knew it. Time would heal it, if he gave it proper care.

John sat back into the cushions, adjusting his arm enough to rest on a pillow, aware of the distant sounds of the street below as they began to filter back into the silence. It seemed like another world. One right outside of his front door but removed from him, as if he had no place in it. Or in the cab Sherlock was surely taking across the city, on his phone with both Molly and Lestrade, demanding information, issuing orders.

He pulled his own phone out, checking to see if Sherlock had texted, even though it was far too soon for that. The silence inside deepened, accentuating his awareness of being here, alone, without any purpose, and John turned on the television, finding the loudest and brightest programme he could.

* * *

Brown eyes – always slightly startled – tracked his movements when he came in, darting to the empty space behind him that Sherlock felt like an affront. Flicker of confusion at the absence, flicker of guilt at being caught in a situation no more intimate than planning dinner.

"Resting his shoulder," Sherlock said to offset the obvious question poised on two sets of lips. "Lestrade, would you stop monopolizing my pathologist?"

"_Your_ pathologist?" the DI snorted. The curl of his lips and light in his eyes made a joke of it, but Molly's expression was more shuttered, serious. A quick glance, perhaps a silent apology, and she relaxed slightly.

"Our replacement Sir Richard Douglas needs some attention – and although I suspect Amanda Hassard has seen her fair share of dead bodies, police work is her area of expertise, not post-mortem examination."

"How is it that you remember her first name?" Lestrade demanded.

Sherlock paused in the act of exchanging his coat for a pair of nitrile gloves.

"Why shouldn't I?" he asked.

"You can't remember mine," Lestrade replied.

"'Course I remember yours," Sherlock muttered, fixing his gaze on the cuffs of the purple gloves covering his hands, ignoring the derisive snort.

"What is it then?"

"No time for this," Sherlock replied briskly, and there was a smile from Molly, a glimmer of laughter dancing in her dark eyes. "We've got someone without a name – at least without a name we know. In your own time, of course," he added, vanishing down the hall.

Another small smile – a knowing one – greeted him. The same glance past his shoulder, searching for someone who wasn't there. The lack of surprise at John's absence made it stand out even more somehow, awareness of a cold space behind him – _of cold space all around him nothing but space John's name vanishing into the windy darkness _– and a deep breath didn't expel the memory, the sensation, but at least shelved it, locked in that bright, hot room where he dared not go.

"'Morning," Hassard said, reality returned with the sound of her voice. Late morning for her – same pale circles under her eyes that Lestrade had, nothing serious, signs of long hours of work that went with the job. Pausing in the act of writing something, left handed. In need of a coffee but wouldn't take one to add to the three she'd already had or there'd be caffeine jitters and the note taking would suffer, although not as much as the concentration.

"Sir Richard Douglas," Sherlock mused as Lestrade and Molly joined them in the cold room, Molly taking up the expert's stance next to the gurney, Lestrade standing back, a step closer to Hassard – professional alignment rather than a personal one.

"The younger," Hassard said.

"What?" Lestrade asked.

"Yes of course," Sherlock replied, saw it immediately. A quick movement had the sheet off, billowing white folded under control. Faint gasp from Molly, raised eyebrow from Hassard, muttered comment from Lestrade.

_Looking at naked men?_ John's voice in his head but sly, jovial.

"It's a body," Sherlock said out loud, displacing all reactions. "Excellent physical shape, particularly strong thigh and calf muscles but not at the expense of the rest of his body – a runner and a cyclist. But not exclusively. Training. Calluses on his feet – not just on the soles but sides of the toes and the heels – used to wearing shoes and boots for some kind of physical activity. Calluses on the hands, too, palms and fingertips – climber. Autopsy will reveal a very healthy cardiovascular system," a glance at Molly, who gave an automatic nod. "Richard Douglas – the _real_ Richard Douglas was an experienced mountaineer. You saw the list – Everest, Lohtse, Kilimanjaro. Those would be the ones of note, of course he would have trained. The Alps, the Himalayas."

"So, what," Lestrade asked, "someone's got a grudge against mountain climbers?"

"Possible but unlikely. Both too broad a category and too narrow. Why _these_ _two_ men? Why steal Douglas' body and leave this one in its place?"

"We don't know Douglas _is_ a body," Lestrade pointed out.

"Of course we do," Sherlock scoffed. "You met the security guard, Singer. Checked the body carefully – alarmed but thorough. No pulse, no breathing. He waited and _counted_ three full minutes looking for a pulse before leaving to locate his colleague. His _idiot_ colleague."

_Forgets a radio when he leaves to use the toilet. Stupid. And now unemployed._

"Lucky it _was _Singer who found the body," Hassard commented. Lips twitched – despite himself – at the derision that slipped into her voice.

"Although now we have to find it again," Sherlock murmured, half to himself, half to the silent space where John ought to have been. "Molly, a toxicology report will determine the cause of this man's death – I suspect when we find Douglas' body, we will also find the same poison was used to kill him."

"But why?" Lestrade demanded, curt, angry gesture toward the body on the slab. "Why these two? What connects them?"

"I don't know," Sherlock said. Bright grin, meeting Lestrade's glower. "Let's see if his family knows, shall we?"

* * *

The sound of Sherlock's ring cut through the chafing banality of the programme and John felt a sharp stab of relief as he dug the mobile from his jeans pocket. Sherlock had sent a lengthy text – including a photograph of the corpse – with the customary flurry of information that had led him to the conclusion that the mystery man was also a mountain climber.

_Is that how they're connected?_ John sent back.

_That is the question_, Sherlock replied.

John waited for more, but it seemed nothing was forthcoming. _Well_, he told himself firmly, shutting off the yappy programme, relishing the returning silence, _you don't have to be completely useless_.

His shoulder might be preventing him from running around London with a lunatic, but he could at least help out from here. He had a photo of the replacement body, and a laptop. Richard Douglas – the real one – shouldn't be too difficult to find online.

He was right about that.

An hour of searching left him with an aching shoulder and a niggling feeling in the pit of his stomach that he didn't get out enough. It wasn't just the pictures from his Himalayan climbs – which John had found himself caught up in, forgetting a few times he was meant to be looking for Douglas and the mystery man together – but the fundraising events, the talks, the benefits, the galas.

The surface looked brilliant – Douglas always smiling, and his wife, too, when they were photographed together – but there was always something beneath that surface.

_Well of course_, he told himself. _Someone went to a lot of trouble to kill him._ He asked himself why – for the thousandth time – and wondered what Sherlock would make of all of this. If he'd go talk to the family and strip away that veneer immediately. Or if it went further than that, if Sherlock would have to push for more information, dig deeper to find the cracks.

With a sigh, John pushed himself to his feet, rotating his good shoulder carefully, tilting his neck side-to-side. Sitting in one position for so long hadn't helped his injured shoulder, and he topped up his ibuprofen, even though he wasn't due another dose yet.

_Nothing online with Douglas and the other man_, he sent to Sherlock. There was no immediate reply; John waited another minute, then two, lips pursed, gaze fixed on his phone.

_He's busy_, he told himself. He'd wanted Sherlock to work, after all. It was hardly the detective's fault John was stuck here, nursing an injured shoulder.

The blame for that rested squarely on someone else.

_Right,_ John thought firmly. _Enough._ It didn't do him any good to start down that path – and it certainly didn't heal his shoulder. He'd done what he could to help Sherlock on the case, and until he got some new information from the detective, he could keep busy with some lighter tasks. No sense moping about, it wouldn't change anything.

He sorted through the post that had been abandoned by Sherlock in its customary "let John deal with it" pile – which included almost everything that came to the detective, too. John had never been able to sort out Sherlock's system for opening his own post. There seemed to be no pattern to his decision, although John strongly suspected his partner would claim otherwise and pretend John just wasn't clever enough to pick it up.

Most of it was fan mail or thank-yous; John sorted through the former for the gems, which included a very skilled line drawing of Sherlock in the hated hat. He folded that to keep for himself, and considered scanning it to put on the blog. The thank-yous he left out. Sherlock usually had the grace to at least glance at them, and John suspected they secretly pleased him – not for the gesture itself, but for being reminded how brilliant he was.

_The frailty of genius_, John thought with a slight smile that vanished at the unbidden, darker association.

Who had been Adler's audience when she'd had them abducted? Them? Mycroft? The public?

Slight of hand – what had _she_ been doing when everyone's gaze had been diverted?

_The question of the hour_. Every hour since they returned, it seemed. John wondered what Sherlock and Mycroft had each found. If they'd kept each other informed. If they'd tell him if he asked.

Mycroft certainly wouldn't. Sherlock… John wanted to think so.

"Okay," he told himself, voice sounding too loud in the silence of the flat. "Focus, Watson." There were still letters to see to.

Sherlock didn't get much in the way of cases via actual post, but there were a handful of written missives that came each week. John read them over, smoothing each letter open and leaving them beside where Sherlock's laptop was currently residing. If prodded – or bored enough – the detective _would_ read them.

He rescued the one from the floor, too, frowning at it, bemused. It had been written in French, so Sherlock had been translating for his benefit. John jotted down what he remembered about the gemstone and the fact that none of the investigations had turned up anything, and left it with the rest.

Sherlock's inbox probably wanted clearing, too, but John stayed away from that unless the need was really dire; accessing the detective's email usually resulted in retaliation in the form of hacking his blog.

That done, he gave himself a few minutes to sit, propping his bad arm on one of the pillows Sherlock had bought. The antsy feeling crept back in and John shook it off by taking himself down to Mrs. Hudson's.

They'd been remiss about changing much of anything down here, and it certainly couldn't be rented the way it was. A few things had gone up to their flat, but a few things had come down, too. Out of necessity, they'd cleared the fridge early on and had taken whatever food they wanted, binning what was open and unusable and donating the rest. Sherlock had moved some of his experiments down to the empty fridge, which gave John no end of relief when he opened theirs and wasn't presented with half-decayed body parts next to the leftovers.

Still, the ground floor flat remained Mrs. Hudson's even in death, with all of her belongings where she'd left them the day John had first taken her to the hospital.

He supposed they could hire someone to come and clean it out, but it felt disloyal. He wasn't worried about what might be found here – Sherlock had seen to the 'herbal soothers' immediately – he just didn't want a stranger rooting through her belongings, as if they were no more than pointless things taking up space. Everything in here had been _hers_. Had meant something. Had been useful or important in some way.

He'd start with the clothes, he decided. Neither he nor Sherlock had any use for those, so there could be no disagreement as to whether or not they were kept. John made two piles, one of jumpers, cardigans, coats, warm socks, hats and scarves – all of which would go to Sherlock's homeless network. The rest would go to the Oxfam shop.

It didn't take long to clear the closets and the drawers and put everything into black rubbish bags, but when John was finished, the bedroom seemed hollow, unable to absorb sound the way it had been before he'd begun. One at a time, he took the bags to the common hall, dumping them near the door to deal with later. Old wood creaked and moaned beneath his feet as he climbed the stairs to the first floor again; John locked the flat door behind him and escaped to the cocoon of downy pillows and blankets that was their bed to shut out everything else with sleep.

* * *

"Pointless," Sherlock snapped once back outside Douglas' home, flipping his collar up and ignoring John's internal commentary at the action. Lestrade snorted, Hassard only raised an eyebrow. "And why are there two of you?"

"Because, sadly, we're not the same person," Hassard replied, unlocking the vehicle. Sherlock hesitated – the back of a police car had some unfortunate memories associated with it that were surprisingly difficult to delete.

Nor did he have any desire for the media to photograph him in the back seat of a car occupied by two police officers.

"It's an unmarked vehicle," Hassard pointed out. "You can pretend I'm your chauffeur."

"Don't give him ideas," Lestrade warned. Sherlock shot him a glower and settled into the seat behind her – she was shorter than her former partner, giving him much needed leg room. "He'll be calling you at all hours next."

"Who says he doesn't?" she murmured, twisting in her seat as she backed down the drive, catching Sherlock's eye with a quick smile.

"Best not let John hear you say that," Sherlock replied.

"Oh, John's not afraid of me," Hassard said, attention diverted away from him to watch for oncoming traffic. She missed reaction he couldn't quite quell, but Sherlock found himself hoping like hell Lestrade hadn't caught it either – or had misattributed it to surprise.

"Was she always like this?" Sherlock demanded, stepping away carefully from the meaning beneath the words Hassard hadn't intended, using the tool – superficial banter – she'd given him.

"She's much better since she met me," Lestrade replied, cocking a grin at Hassard's mock scowl. "I've got that effect on people."

"You wish," Hassard muttered, but there was laughter in her voice.

"Anything, Sherlock?" Lestrade asked.

"They weren't lying," Sherlock said. "At least, not about not recognizing our young Richard Douglas."

"Then about what?" Hassard asked.

"Do you really think any family is that happy?"

"Not happy anymore," she pointed out. "And yes, I do."

"You've been a police officer for nearly twenty years. Surely some sense of cynicism must have rubbed off."

"Happiness isn't a _thing_," Hassard said. "You don't win it like a medal. Life changes, you change with it. Otherwise, what's the point?"

"Who says there needs to be one?" Sherlock murmured.

"We could sit here and wax philosophical," Lestrade said, "but we've still got a missing corpse. _That's_ definitely something that's not going to change unless we do something about it."


	5. Chapter 5

"Stop."

She started, breath caught for a tight moment before the voice registered as Sherlock's, and Molly was able to exhale, lowering the scalpel carefully. Sherlock took up nearly the whole height of the doorway, all tall darkness and pale skin, but he seemed somehow not entirely there. He moved differently when John wasn't with him – and differently still when John _couldn't_ be with him.

Molly wondered if he was even aware of that.

"I was just about to do the autopsy," she said, gesturing vaguely with the knife to the body on the table.

"Obviously," Sherlock replied, arching one eyebrow.

With a sigh, Molly put the scalpel down and removed her mask.

"I need to see his clothes." Sherlock said.

"His clothes?" she asked.

"The ones he was found in at any rate. And I'll need your help dressing him."

* * *

It certainly wasn't the strangest request Sherlock had ever made she considered as they manhandled an unresponsive corpse into the suit.

Helping him fake his suicide definitely took the cake – it still woke her in the middle of the night sometimes, watching him fall past the window, coat billowing like useless wings. She could still feel the strain in her arm and shoulder muscles as she pushed a corpse out of that same window after him.

But there were other things. Things so far removed from that desperate act that sometimes she wasn't sure they had been for the same man.

Like the dog. He'd asked her to perform surgery to remove a key from its stomach, and Molly had baulked – she wasn't a vet. She wasn't even used to living human bodies, let alone animals. Sherlock had insisted, and she still considered it a miracle that the dog had survived at all. Sherlock had, with unusual generosity, called it a testament to her medical skill.

The key had apparently been, well, the key to solving that particular crime – but what Molly really remembered was how gentle Sherlock had been with the animal when no one else had been there but her.

_This_ was all business – same as the suit – and she supposed she should be used to it, but undressing was often easier. Especially when she could simply cut the clothing off. She hadn't this time. Not for cases like these. Not when it might be important.

"What do you think?" Sherlock asked as she straightened a lapel. Molly looked up, meeting clear grey eyes, an expectant expression awaiting an answer. A deep breath and she smoothed her hands down the front of her lab coat, refocusing on the corpse.

_Just look_, she told herself, swallowing against the anxiety that sharp gaze always brought, as if she had to measure up to something she wasn't sure she ever could. He'd have all the answers – she _knew_ that, and she wished – for a moment – she could let it slide past the way Greg did.

_You know enough_, she told herself with a faint grimace.

"He looks bad." The words slipped past her lips unbidden, surprising her with the realization.

"Bad how?" Sherlock demanded.

"The suit doesn't fit him, not properly, like someone bought it for him but he never had it altered. It's too… big. I think."

"In the shoulders," Sherlock agreed, and she saw it suddenly, the place where it was _wrong_, because the sleeves were the right length, and so were the trousers. The jacket fit better at the waist, but the shoulders were too big; what her mind had identified as simply from the body being supine was a fault with the suit itself, not the wearer.

"These aren't _his_ clothes," the detective continued. "The clothes in which he was found, yes, but everything is brand new. No wear marks anywhere you'd expect – around the buttons, the collar, the cuffs. Shirt still has two parallel creases in it from being folded and although there are bits of dust on the jacket and trousers, those come from simply being worn. No hairs anywhere. No wear or marks or dirt on the shoes, either. Unless this was the most meticulous man in the world who also happened to have no sense of his own size, these clothes were never his and he was changed either immediately before or immediately after he died."

"I think you've got most meticulous man all locked up," Molly said, and there was a pause before Sherlock looked up, as if the words needed a moment to register, but then there was a smile – a real one, unexpected reaction to an unexpected comment – and she felt like it was the first time she'd seen _him_ since he'd returned from Wales.

"Even I can't be that fastidious," he disagreed. "I suspect he was changed after he died – no wrinkles or small tears in the clothing that would indicate a struggle and," Sherlock leaned down, sniffing the fabric carefully, starting at the collar, working his way down one sleeve, "it doesn't smell worn."

He pulled away, features creasing, and repeated the olfactory trail back up the dead man's arm.

"Doesn't smell of anything at all except maybe… No, tell me what you think."

A wrist held carefully extended the arm; Molly leaned over the table, doing as instructed, closing her eyes to better focus.

"It smells… damp?"

"Yes," Sherlock said, and there was a touch of relief in his voice – or maybe she was imagining it. "It's wool, so it would retain moisture better than other fabrics, but the suit itself isn't damp," a finger and thumb traced across a lapel, frown lining his features, then a small shake of the head. "If he'd worn this – especially if he'd worn this before he'd died, when blood was still circulating – it would smell like him. It hasn't been damp – not terribly damp – the past few days. Raining now, but that would hardly affect anything stored in here… But the suit's not dirty, either."

"Maybe he was kept in something?" Molly suggested.

"Yes, but what? And where? The building were Douglas worked has a very efficient environmental system."

"Well we know he's not from there. No one recognized him."

"Yes," Sherlock murmured, gaze focused on the dead man, what had once been tanned or darker skin now faded to a breathless white. "Who are you?" he asked, voice distant, and Molly knew she was barely there anymore, not to him, "And how did you get here?"

* * *

"Another morgue?"

"What?" Molly asked.

"We've been trying to locate him in relation to Richard Douglas, but there seems to be no connection, and so the question is: where did he come from? What if he came to us from another morgue?"

"But we'd know," she protested. "Wouldn't we?"

"Would we?" Sherlock asked in return. "You estimated his time of death within a few hours of when Richard Douglas was originally found in his office – but what if our mystery man has been kept cold to delay our estimates?"

"But that wouldn't explain the way his clothes smell."

"He might have been stored at a morgue temporarily and then moved."

"But someone would have reported a corpse missing! They can't just get up and walk out!"

Sherlock's lips quirked, a wry smile, almost cold around the edges. Molly resisted the temptation to take a step back – from what, she wasn't sure. The body separated them anyway, and Sherlock was between her and the door.

"Usually," she amended.

"I tend to be a very unusual case," he replied.

Molly nodded, breaking his gaze to look at the man on the gurney, telling herself not to chew on her lip but catching herself doing it anyway. The flow had been broken; she sought desperately for something to pick it back up.

"How are things with…" Sherlock trailed off, and despite herself, Molly felt a stab of humour.

"Greg."

"With Greg."

"Good. They're good. Um– getting better. It's slow but I think– well I hope– it's good."

"Molly. I am sorry."

She met his eyes again, startled by the unexpected sincerity, managing a brief nod.

"It's not your fault. It needed– I mean _we_ needed to do it. Jim needed to be stopped, right?"

"He did," Sherlock agreed, and she wished she could feel the certainty he so clearly did – not about the need to catch Jim, but for everything else it had entailed.

"Not that it really made much difference," she muttered without intending to, taken aback by the bitterness in her own voice. The immediate aghast apology – because if it didn't matter, that meant everything Sherlock had suffered had been pointless, and _that_ couldn't be true, she wouldn't let it – evaporated when his fingers tightened on the edge of the gurney, taut whiteness at his nails and knuckles.

"I didn't mean–" she forced herself to say.

"I know what you meant," Sherlock snapped, piercing grey eyes finding her like a laser sight, holding her hostage for a moment before he exhaled slowly, a deliberate relaxation. "And what you didn't mean."

For a moment, she thought he'd say something more, but he gave the impression of shaking his head without moving, and the moment was gone.

"Do the autopsy and the toxicology," he said, voice clipped, all business again, no outward hint of the anger – _rage_ – she'd just seen. "I'm going to see if any of the other morgues in the city are in the habit of losing their corpses."

* * *

_Frozen_. Or, technically, refrigerated, Sherlock supposed. Kept right around freezing, wreaking havoc with cellular decay after he'd been thawed. Molly's analysis supported the conclusions he'd drawn from the tissue sample she'd provided.

Either way, it meant proper storage. Not necessarily a morgue, but someone had to know what they were doing with the corpse. No evidence from any of the other morgues in the city – or even in the surrounding areas – was missing a body, but whoever had murdered the younger man and Douglas had been efficient enough to swap them places in a very narrow window of time in a building well protected by security cameras.

That meant skill – and it also meant more than one culprit. One murderer, perhaps but he – the probability that the killer was male was high given typical statistics and the physical demands of moving bodies so quickly – would have needed accomplices.

Morgue records could be removed and covered up. Fingerprints, DNA – those could be erased from databases. With enough talent and cleverness, police reports could be eliminated as well, but it was much more problematic to do so if there was an officer somewhere looking into a disappearance.

Why _hadn't_ anyone missed him? Surely someone would have noticed by now. Far too long a delay replying to a text or an email, a lack of a status update, failure to show up for work or for social plans made in advance.

And how could friends and family and colleagues be prevented from reporting him missing?

_Foreign national_, Sherlock thought. _On holiday. Killed somewhere else and moved here._

The first two weren't entirely likely – there would still be records somewhere, passports, visas, a hotel booking if he'd been here as a tourist. Someone would know him, would recognize him.

"Who are you?" Sherlock murmured, answered by silence from the body on the slab, covered now to hide Molly's neat, precise stitching. "And why did die?"

"I can tell you how, at least," a female voice answered. Sherlock looked up smoothly, unperturbed; he'd heard the footsteps approaching down the corridor, recognized them well enough by now. Hassard held up a file as proof before passing it to him.

"Belladonna," she said. "Which tells us nothing."

"Uncontrolled and could be grown by anyone. Even if Douglas turns out to have been poisoned by the same, we can't trace it."

"Exactly," Hassard sighed, then paused, distracted, as her phone rang. "Yeah, Greg? I'm with him now. Okay, we'll be right there." She hung up, gesturing for the file back. "He wants us at the Yard. Apparently they've found something on the surveillance footage."

* * *

John stirred, grimacing slightly as the ache in his shoulder announced itself again. He lay still, half hoping it would fade to a level he could ignore, but it seemed to grow as the silence in the flat pressed in around him. John shuffled out of bed, downed more ibuprofen, and wrapped himself in Sherlock's tartan dressing gown. It smelled of the detective and made him feel a touch less alone.

_Stop feeling so bloody sorry for yourself,_ he thought, an unfelt scowl crossing his face. This was only one case – and it was nothing compared to the nine months in which he'd thought Sherlock was dead, nor the time between returning home from Afghanistan and meeting the detective.

The sensation was the same thing, and he couldn't quite shake it, no matter how firmly he spoke to himself.

_You know where he is_, John reminded himself. This wasn't Wales. He wasn't alone, cut off from everything, fighting the idea that Sherlock was dead with each breath, which each step that had been unknowingly taking him back to the one thing he'd been really missing.

_Get the fuck out of my head,_ he thought, speaking to nothing more than a memory, the image of a woman who'd faded until she'd been almost gone, only to snap back. Like a trap being sprung. "And my house," he added into the silence around him. "You're not welcome."

The sensation ebbed, leaving him alone in a house that felt like his again. Everything here was his or Sherlock's – _theirs_, he told himself. The word seemed to spread warmth through the flat, taking the edge off of Sherlock's temporary absence.

With a curt, resolved nod, John set aside the self-pity and switched on the telly before setting into his chair with his laptop. He might not be officially on the case, but he was still the blogger, and had more than enough time to make notes on what he already knew.


	6. Chapter 6

"The footage was faked."

"How?" Hassard's voice was faded background noise as Sherlock leaned toward the monitors, eyes flickering over images that didn't seem to shift as seconds slipped by on the internal counter, keeping track of empty time.

"It's hard to see unless you're looking for it," the tech replied. "But…"

"There," Sherlock said, finger hovering over the screen.

"Exactly."

"What is it?" Hassard asked, leaning past the tech on the other side, eyes narrowed in concentration.

"Shadow," Sherlock said before the tech could speak. "Nothing you would see if you were security monitoring the footage for intruders."

"Right," the tech agreed. "Judging by the way the light plays, I'd say an office door was open when this was shot, but if we go back," the video was rewound until the shadow darkened, "here it would be closed. Since no one else was on that floor at the time, this can't be continuous. With the angle and the position of this camera, the light wouldn't be coming from Douglas' office but one down the hall."

"In which direction?" Sherlock demanded.

The tech grinned.

"Spot on. Toward the service lift. I checked the cameras monitoring the lift as well, and they've been tampered with. So have the ones in the parking garage. Whoever did this knew what they were doing – and had reliable access to the security footage."

"But not the eye for detail you have," Hassard murmured.

"And who would have that sort of access?" Sherlock asked, glancing back at Lestrade. "Perhaps a security guard who conveniently forgot his radio when using the toilet at the precise time Singer discovered Douglas' body?"

A sigh from Lestrade as he pinched the bridge of his nose.

"Right. We'll go round him up. _Not_ you!" he added, a warning finger jabbed at Sherlock, who met it with a glare. "Consulting doesn't extend to interrogating suspects."

"I'll just leave you to it then, shall I?" Sherlock asked coolly.

"Or you could use that genius brain of yours and figure out how they got a body in and a body out without being seen by any of the street cameras, and without being recorded by the parking gate."

"They hijacked the building's system," Sherlock pointed out. "No reason they couldn't have done it with the surrounding cameras." But the tech was already shaking his head; a quick, assessing glance confirmed his denial. He'd looked, knowing what to look _for_, and hadn't found the same nearly seamless disruption in that footage.

"You can go lurk and sneak around a building, leaving everyone wondering what the hell you're doing," Lestrade said with a grin. "Should be right up your street."

* * *

Dusk had begun to creep across the city when he left the Yard, stepping into the street to hail a taxi. The driver was subject to a quick evaluation, face scanned rapidly through Sherlock's memory – a habit he'd developed after unwittingly hiring Moriarty's cab. But there was only disinterest.

Not even a _flicker_ of recognition. It annoyed him now, the way it had annoyed him to be so readily identified on the way to the pub with John the night before. Tedious the way people knew his face when he didn't want them to, but remained woefully ignorant when it might have been useful. Or at least mildly gratifying.

Sherlock shut the door with a decisive click, ignoring the faint, habitual protest at the back of his mind that he wait, give John a chance to catch up. The cabbie accepted the address with a brief nod, pulling into traffic smoothly. Lights shifted, buildings slid by; Sherlock catalogued their route and the travel time effortlessly, almost thoughtlessly. Habit developed over the years, only barely affected by a nine month absence.

Habit, too, to check his phone for messages from John. There were some, requests for information that Sherlock didn't have – or didn't have time to send – and updates on the lack of progress on John's end. Nostrils flared slightly, unfelt and unacknowledged frustration like a physical discomfort below the level of conscious observation.

Three days with John's fate a complete unknown to him. An ache in an old injury that turned into a radiolucent line on an x-ray. Surprise from John at his reaction, because John _wouldn't_ see beyond a professional, medical evaluation. Yes, he was annoyed at the inconvenience and unhappy with the pain, but it wasn't only the injury that provoked the reaction.

They had been extraordinarily lucky. A wrong step, bad weather, more serious injuries… Sherlock was no stranger to skirting death – he'd thrown himself off a building, plan or no plan – but that… A situation beyond his experience. Beyond Lestrade's. Not entirely beyond John's, but John had been alone.

He'd been alone in the mountains and had fallen.

Alternate scenarios were pointless – and no matter how often he repeated that fact until it became something of a mantra, a firm reality that his mind ought to accept, there was no denying what might have happened.

It hadn't, but it might have.

There had been no guarantees when they'd been dumped, drugged and without resources, in the wilderness. Players in a game whose outcomes weren't known.

Whose outcomes _she_ couldn't have known.

It hadn't been about them. Hadn't even been about Mycroft, but about something Mycroft had.

Perspective was everything. Something had been taken from his brother, but something had also been taken from _him_. Whatever Mycroft had lost probably wasn't inconsequential – but neither was it important enough to him to have noticed, not immediately, and Sherlock knew full well his brother still hadn't identified the information.

John's loss had caused an immediate impact, one of the first things to filter into a drugged, disoriented awareness. He had felt it through the cold and pain and the haze left by whatever had been used to poison his mind.

Still felt it now, an empty seat beside him in the cab, a cold silence dogging his heels where there should have been the warmth of a familiar presence, sarcastic comments, medical analyses Sherlock trusted.

Surely an injured shoulder wouldn't prevent John from poking around a building that was equipped with lifts.

It would be far preferable to the inexperienced constable Lestrade had assigned to meet him there – the DI had an inappropriate sense of humour, and Sherlock wondered if it were directed at him or the PC. Or both.

Decided, he leaned forward to catch the cabbie's attention, and changed their course to Baker Street.

* * *

"Get out of my house."

Enthusiasm had vanished – sublimated – at his brother's presence; Sherlock didn't allow for the space of a breath between barging through the door and the command, stepping back sharply, leaving enough room for his insufferable sibling to make use of the exit.

"Your house?" Mycroft remained stubbornly seated in Sherlock's chair, legs crossed at the knee, deliberately relaxed posture betraying no hint that the order would be obeyed.

"Yes," Sherlock spat. "Get out."

"I seem to remember Mrs. Hudson deeding the property to John."

"And you know full well that Harry drew up all the proper legal documents, which have been signed and notarized and approved, giving us _both_ ownership. _Go_, Mycroft."

"Or what?" Mycroft asked, voice exasperatingly calm, level. _Deceptive_, because there was something behind the pale eyes that they shared that gave away his ire – and that sparked the same in Sherlock, accompanied by that infuriating powerlessness, the knowledge of wisdom and intelligence he'd never achieve, whose absence was held over him, held against him like a character flaw.

Like the transgression of misplaced action, misguided action – saving a life that had nearly cost him the one he valued most. A quick glance at John returned a warning look. Against arguing, against Mycroft's presence.

"You'll call the police?" his brother continued. "Not very fraternal of you, Sherlock."

"You're going to lecture me–" he spat, but John's voice speaking his name, surgeon's hands held up, palms out, appealing for calm.

"If you came here to start a row, Mycroft, you can just leave," the doctor said. "We've got a case, and we haven't got time for whatever guilt trip you want to lay on him right now."

Mycroft raised his eyebrow, the same coolly condescending expression – just hinting at restrained impatience – that Sherlock had endured the whole of his life. Anger tightened the muscles along his shoulders, in the backs of his hands, resentment that it should be turned against John.

"John, I appreciate you feel some sense of entitlement toward my brother–"

"No," John snapped before Sherlock could even draw a breath. "_You_ do, Mycroft – and it's a piss poor way to treat someone you should damn well care about it. We share a house and a bed and each other's power of attorney," Sherlock felt a little smug about the surprise there, because he'd worked hard to ensure it, "but I don't own him or think he owns me because of it. He's not your baby brother anymore, so you can quit with the bloody attitude."

If Mycroft looked taken aback, it was only briefly, an expression so fleeting anyone else might have missed it – but Sherlock had been watching, catching it when grey eyes were returned to meet his.

"Perhaps I would, if he displayed better judgement."

"Right, that's it," John snapped. "Out. Get out of my house. _Now_."

"He has something for us," Sherlock said, holding up a hand without breaking his brother's even gaze. "Don't you?"

"What?" John spat.

He met his partner's eyes briefly and John sighed, throwing up his good hand in disgust, but the sharp shake of his head signalled his acquiescence – for now.

"You know what was taken," Sherlock said.

"As a matter of fact, no," Mycroft replied. "Although I suspect I know who took it."

"We already know that," Sherlock retorted.

"We know who's behind it," Mycroft corrected, producing a memory stick from the recesses of an inner pocket. "But not who did the actual pilfering. This has some answers – although raises more questions, I'm afraid. When I say I suspect I know who took the information, it's somewhat misleading."

"Misleading how?" John asked.

"Watch it," Mycroft said. "It will be easier to explain."

Security footage from the building that housed Mycroft's office – at least the official one, where he held meetings, and the only one which Sherlock had ever been permitted to see. Nothing out of the ordinary, men and women in business attire criss-crossing the floor, two security officers at the main desk, keeping a sharp eye out, signing in a courier.

"That's him," Mycroft said.

"Who?" Sherlock asked.

"The courier. The young man you have in the morgue. Or rather, it's supposed to be."

"Keeping track of me?" Sherlock snarled, ignoring John's surprise in favour of the familiar indignation.

"You do generally operate in Britain's best interests, and it's useful to keep an eye out, yes," Mycroft replied. "That," he nodded at the screen, "is supposed to be Karam Sarraf, twenty-four, born in Exmouth, raised in Bournemouth from the age of six when his father was transferred for work, moved to London at the age of nineteen, employed since then as a… bicycle courier," the note of disdain for the physical activity wasn't entire suppressed, and Sherlock felt rather than saw the smile that curled on John's lips despite everything, "which left him more than enough time for his true passion, which was… spelunking, I'm told it's called."

Sherlock raised his eyebrows, filing the information away, crossing off one mystery: why Douglas and their now-identified mystery man had never been spotted together. Similar signatures left on the body from similar activities that went in entirely opposite directions.

"Known as 'Kipper' to his friends for reasons I cannot fathom, and last registered signing into the building twelve days ago. While his company had him listed as being on holiday."

"Twelve days?" John asked, but Sherlock didn't need the confirmation for the quick mental arithmetic; two days after their abrupt disappearance from London, before their paths had converged.

"And that, of course, isn't him," Mycroft said. "Oh, it looks like him, superficially, but, it's not. Close enough that the altered identification photo would draw no suspicion."

"You saw him?" Sherlock demanded.

"No," Mycroft said. "But I wasn't there that day. Something else was demanding my attention, if you'll recall. He signed in at two-oh-seven in the afternoon, signed back out eighteen minutes later."

"That's a long time to drop off a package," John said.

"But not long to root through someone's office," Sherlock replied. "He knew what he was looking for."

"Evidently," Mycroft replied. _I wish I did_, Sherlock heard as unspoken subtext, a flash of surprise momentarily grounding him at how blindsided Mycroft had been.

"It was something you didn't know you had," Sherlock said, realization coming only with the words, catching a frown from his brother. "It's why you haven't been able to identify the information as missing or copied. A lot of information passes across your desk, Mycroft – even you can't possibly process it all immediately. Particularly if it seems innocuous."

"I had thought of that," Mycroft sighed.

"So if this fake Sarraf stole something from you, why is Richard Douglas dead, too?" John asked.

"An excellent question," Mycroft said. "I suspect the answer will lead you nicely back to the reason behind your little Welsh adventure."

"_You're_ the reason for that," Sherlock snapped.

"The responsible party, then," Mycroft replied. "We're running this false Sarraf's image through out databases, and I'll be sure to let you know when we find something." Sherlock's disbelieving snort was ignored. "In the meantime, I suggest you let Lestrade know you have an identity, and that you focus your efforts on finding Sir Richard Douglas. I do believe that's where she wants you to look."

* * *

"Sherlock!"

The reverberations of the door slamming below him were the only answer to the desperate shout; John slumped against the wall, aware of the discomfort in his shoulder, and ran his good hand over his face.

"Jesus Christ," he muttered, not caring if it was loud enough for Mycroft to hear.

He'd eat his hat if Mycroft really hadn't had the faintest idea that Sherlock would react like this. The urge to chase him down made John's legs burn – but there was no point. Not with his arm the way it was and the sling; Sherlock would jump some fence and be out of reach.

Besides, with his mental map of the city, he'd disappear like a shadow, letting the night swallow him up.

He had his phone on him, though. Unless he thought to turn it off – and he probably would, John knew – he could be tracked. He'd have to call Lestrade, let the DI know. There was one other person who could deal with Sherlock right now.

It was enough of a risk, and Sherlock could certainly give Lestrade slip if he wanted to, but no one else had a shot at getting close.

Not when Sherlock was in this kind of mood.

"Get out," John said brusquely, stepping back into the flat, irritation flaring that Mycroft was still there, unperturbed, as if nothing had happened. "Now."

"I'll send someone to fetch him, of course."

"No you bloody won't!" John shot back. "Jesus, Mycroft, what the hell is your problem? I thought you were supposed to be the smart one! You're not shy about reminding us all of that, but what the _hell_ was that?"

"Information," Mycroft said smoothly, coolly, succeeding only in raising John's hackles all the more. "Decisions have consequences, John. He needs to know that."

John swallowed a choice string of curses that would have made his drill sergeant blush, muscles in his jaw aching at the effort of restraining himself.

"He damn well knows," he snapped.

"Does he?" Mycroft enquired, raising one eyebrow. John jabbed a finger toward the door, not trusting himself to speak for a taut moment.

"He made a choice," he finally growled. "Maybe it was a bad one in retrospect–"

"I should think that four murders in the space of two weeks scarcely qualifies as a 'maybe'," Mycroft replied.

"Put that blame where it belongs," John snapped. "Is he responsible for what she does now?"

"Someone needs to be," Mycroft murmured.

"Yeah. Her. It's not the first time she's left a trail of bodies, Mycroft, even if she didn't put them there. Neither did he. Now get _out_, or I will bloody well call the police!"

"You will anyway," Mycroft said smoothly, and John smothered a reaction, fisting his good hand to displace the urge to throw something.

Like a punch.

"Out!" he barked, slamming the door behind Mycroft, twisting the deadbolt in its socket. Catching his breath, listening to the sound of footsteps retreating slowly down the stairs. To the faint creak and click of the front door. John kept still, breathing shallow and silent, hearing strained. Mycroft could probably out do him when it came to silence, but years of military instinct didn't lead him astray; when he poked his head out cautiously, he found himself alone.

John crept down the stairs, avoiding the creaky floorboards, and checked Mrs. Hudson's thoroughly before double-checking the locks on the front doors, satisfied that they were shut.

With a sigh, he made his way back upstairs, opening his contacts on his phone, staring at Lestrade's name on the screen.


	7. Chapter 7

He hadn't been able to bring himself to do it.

Four phone calls to Sherlock had gone straight to voicemail, and John had left useless messages before finally resorting to a text that probably wouldn't be read.

_He's gone. It's fine. Come home._

He hated how plaintive it sounded, but at the same time, how cold and commanding. A brief smile touched his lips – Sherlock wouldn't have given that tone a second thought. The expression vanished almost before it was formed; the house had taken on that vacant feel again, too big, too much uncertainty filling up all the cracks and empty spaces.

John pressed his phone to his lips, eyes closed, whispering a silent prayer – to whom or what he didn't know. To Sherlock, really.

_Can't you leave well enough alone?_ he asked, but it wasn't his partner he was talking to this time.

"Right," he said, the word falling flat in the silence that surrounded him. If Greg could get to Sherlock before one of Mycroft's people did, it would save them all a hell of a lot of headaches. The last thing they needed was for Mycroft to end up with a bloody and broken nose – or worse.

There were probably some stiff penalties for beating up the British government.

With a sigh, he steeled himself, and rung Lestrade's number.

"Greg," he greeted, pre-empting any conversation, "we have a problem."

* * *

"Jesus Christ, you're kidding." The weary, disbelieving curse was accompanied by a _bang_ from downstairs – the front door slamming shut, echoing behind feet taking the stairs two at a time. Not enough time to register that Sherlock had come back before the detective was right there, in a swirl of wool and anger, plucking the phone from John's unresisting fingers.

"Piss off, Greg, I'm fine," he snapped before ending the call abruptly, pitching the phone onto John's chair without even looking round. John was caught in a teetering moment where the shock of Sherlock's presence was outweighed by surprise that he'd remembered Lestrade's name – or had guessed it correctly.

"How do you not know?" Sherlock demanded, towering over John, using his height the way he so often did – all of the irritation but none of the malice.

"What?" John demanded.

"How do you not know, John?" Sherlock snapped again, familiar frustration at being asked to repeat himself overlying the bright, crackling anger for just a moment. "About the Woman! How do _you_ not know?"

"How didn't I know?" John replied, pushing himself to his feet, forcing Sherlock to give him some room – but not much, and the detective was right in his space, pinning him between the sofa and a tall, unyielding body. "Sherlock, how could I possibly have known–"

"_Listen,_ John! I am not asking you why you _didn't_ know, but how you _don't _know. How, John? Tell me how!"

"How what!" John yelled. "I don't know what the bloody hell you're talking about!"

"There's always a choice. Those were your words to me, John, the night Mrs. Hudson died, were they not?"

John nodded mechanically, searching Sherlock's features – dark and shuttered – for some hint as to what was going on, trying to keep up with someone who was, as always, five steps ahead.

"Why is it that mine is not obvious?"

"What?" John asked. Sherlock set his jaw, a sigh gusting from his nostrils. Breaking his hold on John's gaze, as if frustration made it impossible to sustain that link, however momentarily.

"You _don't_ feel any sense of entitlement toward me?" Sherlock demanded, jabbing a finger toward the chair Mycroft had so recently occupied. "_You?_ Since when, John? Because that seems new!"

"I don't–" John began, but fingers curled around the neck of his jumper, the snarl silencing him, making him draw back as much as he could without losing his footing.

"You're the _only_ one with the right!"

He drew back slightly, involuntary surprise, lips parting with a reply that died at the dark, frustrated glint in Sherlock's eyes.

"Three days, John," Sherlock growled, the sound reverberating in the small space between them. "_Three days_ lost in an uninhabited wilderness with no means of contacting anyone, nor any idea of why we were there!"

"You don't have to remind me!" John snapped, curt tone unable to complete repress the memory of confusion, of fear. The way each step had brought him closer to home, but also closer to knowing that the tenuous, almost suffocating, hope could be broken. That he might really have been alone this time. Knowing that he couldn't have face it. Not again. Not without spending each day after that half convinced it was a lie.

The disbelief when he'd seen figures in the distance, compounded when he'd realized one of them was a tall, dark shadow. The _impossibility_ of it, the conviction – fear – that he'd be proven wrong even when he could see that it was Sherlock crossing the distance between them.

The harsh, protracted moment before he'd been able to curl his hands into the heavy fabric of Sherlock's coat, half certain the illusion would vanish like mist, leaving him with nothing.

Shock at the reality, at being able to stand when confronted with a body – real, warm, smelly, shaking, weak, but somehow holding them up.

"Why am I not allowed the luxury of thinking the same?" Sherlock demanded.

John's lips formed a question, the words evaporating before they were voiced. Searching Sherlock's eyes again, looking for some hint that he'd misunderstood, or was being mislead.

"But–"

"What conclusion should I have reached, John, given the facts I had? We were all three together, then Lestrade and I were in the middle of nowhere."

"That doesn't mean–"

"Did you tell yourself that?" Sherlock interrupted. John nodded quickly; he had – over and over and over until it had stuck in a loop in his mind, trying to quell the fear that had only grown stronger with each step.

"Drugged and dehydrated and starving – yet by your own admission, you were better off than we were, with fuel for fire and enough experience to snare small game. You said it to me, out there. 'You're alive'."

John nodded, feeling stuck on the motion, scrambling to keep up as if he were several sentences behind in the conversation – or missing a key piece, which he thought might be true.

"Drugged and dehydrated and starving, John! Why would I have thought any differently?"

John stared, aware that he wasn't doing much else, trying desperately to follow Sherlock's path – not because he didn't understand – or at least he thought he might – but because it was _Sherlock_, who had so often worked on no food or drink, who had subjected himself to drugging on a regular basis, for whom this had been normal_._

_Not normal_, he realized, meeting a piercing glower.

Nothing about that situation had been normal.

_You saved her life,_ he wanted to say, certain that Sherlock had caught the words in his expression even when he pursed his lips against them. A decision Mycroft hated – but one both he and Sherlock's brother should have seen coming. Would have, if they'd had the right information.

Sherlock had saved her life, and she'd tossed his into the middle of nowhere like it meant nothing. A pawn in a game she was playing that they didn't understand. Not yet. Minor players whose fates she hadn't known – and hadn't been interested in.

"Why is she here?" Sherlock hissed. "Not here," he jabbed a finger in the small space between them, "_here_." The same finger against John's forehead, a tiny, warm point of contact. "Why are _you_ giving her _anything_?"

_I thought you were dead_. He heard his own voice saying it, and Sherlock's, overlapping until they were indistinguishable, and it hit him like a train, the past two weeks suddenly illuminated for him, throwing his misconception into stark contrast with reality. Everything that had been about _him_, that he'd been misattributing to _her_ since Sherlock had pieced it together that first night home, smoking a cigarette on the stairs.

The livid, barely restrained reaction to the x-ray. The stubborn, almost petulant refusal to take cases. Being accompanied to work, a close presence tracking his every move.

He'd misread Sherlock entirely. His reactions. The reasons behind them.

It wasn't betrayal. Nor hurt.

_Fury_.

Three years ago, at an abandoned pool at midnight, he'd watched shock fade to horror when he'd opened his coat, movements dictated by the sing-song voice in his ear, slowed by the cold feeling in his stomach.

Moriarty had stopped being an interesting game in that wrenching, suspended moment.

When it became a choice. The choice Sherlock had just thrown at him, the one John had understood until _she_ had come back– _But that's stupid_, he realized, because _Sherlock_ had known she'd been alive the whole time, and he'd made the decision all the same.

"_Why_ do you imagine I'm waiting for something better to come along?" Sherlock demanded. "I've never had to do that, John."

John closed his eyes, exhaling hard.

He'd told Mycroft he didn't doubt Sherlock's loyalties.

It had felt like a lie then, a buried uncertainty as to whom Sherlock would actually choose.

_You're an idiot_, John told himself, _a sodding, stupid, bloody fucking lucky idiot. _

He opened his eyes again when a hand wrapped around the back of his neck, lightly, not confining. He tilted his head back slightly, enough to better meet Sherlock's eyes, and to increase the contact.

"Yeah," he said. "Me neither."

A ghost of a smile on Sherlock's lips, thumb stroking carefully along the line where neck met shoulder, coming nowhere close to the injury. She'd done that, and John knew exactly how angry he'd be if their situations had been reversed. He'd lived it.

A physical injury, an emotional manipulation.

It made no difference.

He reached up with his good hand – carefully – to curl his fingers over Sherlock's.

"Right. I get it."

Another brief smile, a quiet, derisive snort asking if he really did, then the expression vanished, replaced by stony seriousness in Sherlock's eyes and the angles of his face. John kept his own expression open, letting Sherlock search it until something shifted behind pale eyes, finding the truth in the statement.

"But not entitlement," John said, giving his head a shake. "'Claim' would be a better word."

It certainly would for how Sherlock felt him about him – and his things, and his time, and his personal space. The smile was back on the detective's lips; John traced it with a thumb, watching a shadow of desire flicker for a moment. Amazed that it was his, telling himself not to be so stupid about it ever again.

"What do we do now?" John asked. "For the case, I mean."

He got no answer as Sherlock's eyes narrowed, searching and assessing – something that looked like hesitation around the edges of his expression. Not, John thought, about him. About the case itself, or about his injury.

He let Sherlock decide.

"That depends," the detective said, "on how you feel about parking garages."

* * *

The bright floodlights and the police presence slowed Sherlock down for one brief moment until irritation that the world didn't wait on his whims was replaced by the surprise at the police being several steps ahead of him. John cupped Sherlock's elbow gently, just long enough for the touch to register, but it didn't slacken the quick pace as shoes clicked assuredly over the surface of the emptied lot, long stride taking him right toward Hassard.

"Where's Lestrade?" he demanded without preamble. Hassard gestured to the PC Sherlock had interrupted, sending him off to join the others prowling the gaping, echoing space, torches swinging light into darkened corners missed by the floodlights.

"Interviewing the other security guard," she replied. Sherlock pursed his lips against comment, giving a soft, annoyed sigh; Hassard looked past him at John, raising her eyebrows.

"Good to see you, John. How's the shoulder?"

"It's all right," John replied, taking care not to shrug along with the statement, aware that Sherlock was restraining himself against fidgeting.

"We're looking for the point of entry," Hassard said, beckoning to both of them, supplying them with torches of their own. "The main lifts are probably out of the question, but we're looking into them all the same. Stratham – that's the tech you harassed earlier, Sherlock – says their cameras weren't tampered with, nor was the key card mechanism overridden. Best bet's the service lift – or the stairs, but nine flights up with one body and down with another? Even if you're trained, that's a hell of a hike."

"Mm," Sherlock hummed non-committally, swinging his torch in the direction of the service lift. John gave Hassard a commiserative look when the detective strode away, leaving them both to catch up.

"We know Douglas was a mountaineer and that Sarraf was a spelunker – no reason to assume the killers weren't as well trained."

"I'm not," Hassard said, giving her head a small shake. "I've got people searching the stairwell, too. I think it's less likely – the lift would be easier."

"Yes," Sherlock murmured in his half-listening voice, crouching to examine the card mechanism for the lift. "And easier to forge or obtain a card for this lift than the main ones or the stairs."

"Exactly."

"But how did they get in?" he demanded, standing and turning in one smooth movement, torch swinging up to catch Hassard in the face, moving back down abruptly when she held up a hand to shield her eyes.

"Easy," she protested, blinking hard; John gave Sherlock a pointed glare, and the detective at least pretended to look abashed. "We don't know – we're working on it. Looking into every car and delivery vehicle registered in and out that day. The ones that were here at the time – including Douglas' – are in the forensics impound, but so far nothing."

"Douglas drove himself?" John asked.

"Of course he did," Sherlock replied before Hassard could. "You saw his office, John, and his accomplishments. A man like that? He took pride in self sufficiency. His wife on the other hand… she _does_ have a driver."

"We're checking into that, too," Hassard said, and John felt a moment of pity for her and Lestrade – the net seemed cast so wide, especially now.

"Good," Sherlock murmured, distracted again, wandering off, getting no more than a few steps before calling John's name. With an apologetic look at Hassard, he fell into step behind the detective, who was moving slowly across the space between the service lift and the block that housed the main lifts and the stairs. Curious police officers watched them go by; John ignored them through practiced habit, knowing Sherlock noticed them only as potential obstacles – if at all.

"Shut the lights off!"

"What?" Hassard demanded.

"The floodlights! Shut them off!"

John watched the DI argue with herself, defeated with a sigh, and she repeated the order to her people. Darkness fled back in, broken by torch light and the dimmer lights of the parking garage. Eyes closed, John counted to five slowly in his head before letting himself see again, finding Sherlock instinctively.

"What is it?" he murmured.

* * *

A raised hand stilled any further questions; Sherlock could feel them poised on John's lips, a light pressure in the air around them, as if unvoiced words had a weight of their own.

They always did, with John.

Easier now to judge the character of that weight, now that he had all the facts.

The facts about John, because there was something missing _here_ – something more than Douglas' body. John's suspended words were questions about what Sherlock was seeing, but he didn't know yet, moving slowly across the asphalt, feet registering information through the soles of his shoes, cataloguing and assessing, but this wasn't what was important.

Hiding in plain sight. He understood that so thoroughly, had used assumptions and misapprehensions to move through the world, dead, for nine months, and there was something hiding _here_, a shadow in the wrong place, empty space where there should be none.

Not any of the police officers, whom Hassard had mercifully silenced, and he could feel the weight of their gazes, lighter than John's expectations. Not a person. A thing. The floodlights made it too obvious, let gaze skitter past it without registering it. Something expected that no one saw, because it meant nothing, it looked as if it belonged.

A slow pace tracing the path between the main lifts and the service lift. Barred, rectangular entrances, brushed steel or painted into anonymity. Stairs marked with a "way out" sign that announced their presence, key card reader undamaged here. Burnished metallic glint of two lifts. Lift service access doors, maintenance closets.

Torch light glanced over the "way out" sign before swinging toward the garage's exit, automated arm down, holding them in.

_Way out_, he thought, counting the doors carefully, slowly, refusing to let his mind slip past what seemed banal, insignificant.

"Amanda," he called when he was certain, "do you have the blueprints for the building?"

"Yeah," she replied. A brief discussion with a constable – necessary logistics – but it was John beside him that was the important data point, a second beam of light joining his, hovering on chipped black paint. John moved aside, but there was no real sense of distance as Hassard stood between them, architectural map spread between her hands.

"That's the maintenance access for the service lift," Sherlock said, illuminating the door with his torch. "The one on the other side is a custodial closet – storage, probably. What's this one?" Back to the one right in front of them, standing closed like a mute shadow.

She shook her head, the light from John's torch moving slightly across the page as if searching for an answer.

"It's on here, but it's not marked."

"We should find out," Sherlock said, arching an eyebrow.

"Yep," Hassard agreed. "Hang on. I think there's someone who might know."

* * *

"Sure, I know," Singer replied, glancing between the three of them as if confused. "It used to lead down to some old service tunnels that ran under the buildings in this area."

"And no one thought that was worth mentioning?" Hassard snapped.

"They haven't been used in– well, decades as far as I know. There's nothing down there."

"If you don't know how long it's been since they were used, how do you know nothing's down there?" Sherlock asked dryly, unable to entirely resist the urge to shine the beam of his torch at the guard's face.

"The door's all bricked up on the other side," Singer said, squinting in the light, and a quiet cough from John made Sherlock sigh but lower the torch.

"Why not on this side?" Hassard asked. The guard shrugged, shaking his head.

"Inspector, would you take a bet on whether or not that seal is still standing?" Sherlock asked.

"Not a chance," Hassard replied, glancing over her shoulder. "Johnson! Flores! Get a kit. If it's blocked behind – even partially – we'll have to take that door down."


	8. Chapter 8

"We're going to need maps," Hassard said, the beam of her torch cutting into the dampened darkness beyond the open and unsealed door.

"We're going to need headlamps," Sherlock corrected. "And sterile suits." He smiled brightly at the puzzled look she gave him, and John suspected he was the only one that caught the fleeting hint of brittle triumph in his partner's expression. "I'll supply the maps."

* * *

It gave the impression of vast, echoing space, even though the pipes that ran above them and along one side were not very far removed from the mud-smeared concrete floor. Silence wasn't really silence, punctuated by breathing, by the sounds of people working filtering down from the parking garage at the top of the old metal staircase, by the dripping of water here and there that somehow didn't seem forlorn.

Because it wasn't _lonely_. John would have bet they were alone now, the three of them, lights from their headlamps cutting through the gloomy darkness, but this wasn't a place that knew abandonment, for all that it was supposed to have been sealed off for decades.

Below the streets, away from the eyes of passers-by and surveillance cameras, artists had made this a canvas, and there was hardly a surface uncovered by vivid colours, deep blacks or stark whites. Tags, some of them readable or identifiable as names. Chopped symbols left by new paint obscuring older. Snatches of phrases – street philosophers and hate speech crowded their words against each other. An incomprehensible phrase in a foreign alphabet, written in sharp red and surrounded by intricately painted blue figures that were more imagination than symbols. The profile of a girl so shockingly lifelike despite the deliberate discolouration of purples and yellows that John took a picture of it for the blog.

He took pictures of everything, glancing at Hassard who gave him a consenting wave of the hand, her attention more focused on Sherlock and on the scene than on him. The detective was crouched, moving in that way of his that should have been impossible but he pulled off with a quick grace, stopping to press gloved hands against the cold surface, head pivoting like an owl's, beam from his headlamp illuminating whatever he wanted to subject to his glare.

He looked angular, the garish light from the headlamps heightening his sharp features, deepening the shadows. It wasn't just a trick of the light, John thought – the shadows were in the detective's expression, well hidden, but he was the expert on Sherlock Holmes. Even if Hassard didn't see it, John knew the shape of familiar muscles too well for tension to go unrecognized.

A case like this would normally have been Sherlock's game, but there was a more dangerous one in play now. They could be walking into a trap, waiting for the snare to snap, and John wondered for a sickening moment if this was how Sherlock had felt when he'd stepped onto the roof with Jim Moriarty, all variables and no certainty.

John doubted Irene Adler had the resources to manage that. Doubted, but wasn't sure.

Unless, of course, she was working for Mary.

_Jesus_, he thought, holding his balance, suppressing the sudden suspicion from being voiced. If he'd made the connection, then Sherlock already had before him. John wondered if he hadn't raised the possibility because he didn't think it was one, or out of some misplaced sense of kindness.

_She hates games,_ he reminded himself. It was the reason Moran and Moriarty were dead and, as Sherlock had explained, the reason why she hadn't been behind their impromptu trek in Wales.

He was jumping at shadows, imagining links that didn't exist.

At least, he hoped like hell he was.

A deep breath let him refocus, tuning his hearing to the silence from Sherlock that meant deduction at too rapid a pace to speak. He turned his attention back to the walls, seeing colours and patterns repeated. He photographed them, wondering if they mattered.

"It's not the writing on the walls, John, it's the writing on the floor. Look here," Sherlock stood, catching John's attention. Circling carefully, keeping away from the edges of the path where the muck was thicker and Hassard had forbidden them to go to avoid ruining footprints. "There are fresh traces of mud on the stairs, so we know they were used recently – not to mention the bricks blocking the door were carefully removed. Someone had time to do this, which means they knew the tunnel system and could gauge when it wouldn't be in use. Likely at night, to avoid being overheard by anyone in the parking garage."

"They had the guard, too," Hassard pointed out. "He'd have been able to let them know when it was safe to work on the other side."

"Quite right," Sherlock agreed. "There are footprints almost everywhere – some old, some more recent, but nothing particularly fresh, so none of our skilled artists have been down here recently, I'd say within the last forty-eight hours."

"If the killers came through here, it would be a lot more recently."

"Yes, and we'd expect them to leave footprints as well – and they would expect us to expect that. These are clever men – balance of probability for their sex – who orchestrated a very elaborate exchange without being detected until it was far too late. They would know that we'd find this, eventually."

"So they covered their tracks as they went," John said.

"Precisely," Sherlock agreed, eyes flickering up to meet his. "And in the most efficient way possible. Using the body itself."

"Efficient?" Hassard asked. "It's not easy to drag a corpse."

"But it _is_ easier if that corpse is bagged. The clothing in which Sarraf was found wasn't his – he'd been put into the suit sometime after he died, but it smelled of damp."

"No shortage of that here," Hassard said.

"The suit _smelled_ damp but _wasn't _damp, nor was it dirty. Molly surmised he must have been kept in something, which makes sense. We know he was stored below freezing – properly stored, too – but even down here, it's cold enough that short term, he would have kept for a short while."

"It's been almost two weeks," John said.

"At least," Sherlock agreed. "He had been frozen, but they wouldn't want him to look or feel frozen when he was found."

"You think they stored him down here to thaw out?" John asked.

"In a body bag," Sherlock agreed. "Keeps the mud and the damp off, but down here, he doesn't thaw so quickly he begins to decompose at a rapid rate."

"These tunnels are obviously used," Hassard pointed out.

"As I said, not within the last forty-eight hours. Perhaps this one was temporarily blocked, or someone was stationed here to keep watch. Perhaps whoever frequents this area has a keen enough sense to stay out of trouble."

"Yeah, right," Hassard said, sitting back on her heels. "Aside from breaking into abandoned tunnels to spray graffiti everywhere."

"Spray cans aren't that dangerous," Sherlock said, lips quirking.

"Places like this can be."

"And there must be all manner of hiding places down here," Sherlock added. "Who knows how far these tunnels extend, and where they join with the sewers or forgotten bomb shelters or tube service corridors."

"Something tells me you're going to suggest we find out," John said. The smile Sherlock gave him was full-fledged, the knife bright grin John associated with them about to do something incredibly ill-advised.

"Keep your camera at the ready, John. We may see something significant."

"Oh, so _now_ you think the graffiti is important?" John asked.

"Everything's important," Sherlock sniffed. "Until it's not."

* * *

_This is insane_, John thought, but had to admit to himself that it wasn't the most irresponsible thing he'd done since he'd met Sherlock.

As irresponsible things with Sherlock went, it was actually pretty far down the list, possibly even approaching sanity.

They had a police officer with them – and a DI to boot. John had expected Hassard to protest, until he'd seen the look on her face following Sherlock's explanation of where and why Sarraf's body had been stored.

He was used to exasperation from the Met when it came to Sherlock, but there was none of that captured in her expression. It struck him that while this might be a game for the people behind it – and even to some extent to Sherlock, despite everything – this wasn't for her.

Someone had stolen two lives, and John could see the dark anger beneath the incomplete mask of professionalism. She followed without question – but not without having given orders for a systematic search to be devised, for more teams, and dogs. Sherlock had chafed but had – amazingly – waited until she was satisfied before leading the way deeper into the tunnel.

It was slow going in the unfamiliar darkness, even with the lights from their headlamps. He tried to follow the right-angle twists and turns of the tunnel as it bypassed whatever it had been built around, but underground navigation always left him confused. He gave up after a short time, leaving the mapping to Sherlock, who would record the path with unerring accuracy, and focused on the photography and on keeping an even footing.

John was slowing them down even more and he knew it – where Sherlock and Hassard could scramble over debris that hadn't been cleared or duck easily into low-hanging spaces, he had to take his time. The lack of complaint from Sherlock was something of a minor miracle, but John felt grey eyes raking over him, along with the beam from the detective's headlamp, at each delay.

He was faking it pretty well, he thought, the movement helping him ignore the pain, the slower pace letting him get a good look around. Sherlock was channelling his inner tracker, following the marks left behind the by the body bag that had dragged Douglas away from the scene his own death.

"Some of these are repeating," John murmured, tapping the bright splash of paint on a curving wall as they went past. Hassard glanced over her shoulder, head lowered enough not to blind him.

"Tags," she replied. "Someone's territory, no doubt."

"Disputed territory," Sherlock corrected in an off-handed tone that told John his body might be here, but his mind was miles ahead, racing through underground passageways, chasing down hints and leads and suspicions as carefully and expertly as he was tracing the smeared path.

"Not much to fight over," John commented.

"But more than nothing," Sherlock murmured, holding up a hand for them to stop. Two torch beams joined his, peering past his shoulder; the tunnel had come to an abrupt end, a circular hole in the ground making room for the ladder that vanished into the gloom. Sherlock tilted his head back, light following the ladder up into the shadows above them. John joined him, trying to catch the hint of a hatch or manhole; as far as he could tell, it was smooth concrete above their heads.

"Sealed over?" he suggested.

"Down it is," Sherlock agreed.

"Not a chance," Hassard said, an arm snapping out suddenly to block Sherlock's path, catching the detective up short. "We have no idea what's down there, and I'm not going in with two unarmed civilians and no back up."

"John's technically not a civilian," Sherlock pointed out dryly. "And neither of us is unarmed."

"I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that last bit," she said. "And it doesn't matter – John can't climb a ladder with his arm in a sling, and I'm not letting you go traipsing about in an unmapped tunnel by yourself."

"You can hardly stop me," Sherlock replied, and John heard more than saw the flare of nostrils in response.

"Police investigation. You don't like my methods, you can go home. Besides, Greg'd kill me if you ended up dead – or worse – on my watch."

"What's worse than dead?" Sherlock wondered, tone half taken aback, and John was certain his smirk wasn't unnoticed, for all that the detective's back was to him. Sherlock glanced over his shoulder, grey eyes cool.

"Probably a lot of things," Hassard snapped. "You don't get to find out, not today. Back we go." She herded them in front of her this time, John's lips twitching at the scowl on Sherlock's face.

"Don't push it," he murmured, knowing full well his comment wouldn't go unheard by the DI.

"I never do," Sherlock replied.

"Yeah, right," John muttered.

* * *

The end of the tunnel closest to the stairs – what John thought of as the main area – was lit with floodlights by the time they returned, making them squint slightly as their eyes adjusted. Thrown into such unforgiving light, the art on the walls seemed both starker and more vivid. The portrait of the girl seemed to have aged with the illumination. John took another picture of it, wondering what the artist had intended when it had been painted.

The blue symbols surrounding the red writing were more intricate than he'd first noticed, too. He took another couple of shots, close up to capture them in detail, further back to catch the phrase as well.

"Do you know what that says?" he murmured when Sherlock joined him, a warm, soundless presence behind his good shoulder.

"Don't look behind you."

"What?" John asked, but Sherlock was already disobeying the message. John turned, eyes skimming the opposite wall. The irritated sigh from beside him drew his attention, and his headlamp, to the wall in front of them.

"Yesterday is not ours to recover, but tomorrow is ours to win or lose." Puzzled, the doctor followed the detective's pointing finger, picking out one of the phrases he'd seen earlier. "And there, 'keys open doors'. It's _inspirational_," Sherlock said, voice cool, holding the word at arm's length as though it was distasteful.

"So what language is this one in then?" John asked. "Looks almost Arabic, but not."

"It's written in Hindi. The writing system – which I suspect if what you were asking about – is Devanagari. Used mainly for Hindi and Sanskrit scripts. Among others, of course."

"Why am I not surprised you know that?" John asked with a smile, glancing up at his partner, lips twitching into a faint grimace at the twinge of pain in his shoulder.

"John…"

"It's fine," he said automatically, then sighed, resisting the urge to shake his head. "Okay, it's not really fine. But not bad."

Sherlock was silent, expression shuttered, darkened around the edges but wary, as if holding himself apart from the topic. Or reluctant to broach it further.

"It's just– She's right you know. Hassard. I can't climb that ladder one-armed. I'm not much use here."

"You're always useful," Sherlock retorted, the thin press of his lips almost affronted. John grinned, giving his partner's bicep a squeeze, replacing uncertainty with a quick affection.

"So you always tell me."

"And I don't lie." Sherlock's voice dipped into a growl, but John was adept at reading those tones, and this was more protest than actual irritation.

"You lie all the time," John replied.

"I don't _lie_. I just– decorate the truth a little."

A chuckle slipped past John's lips and he gave his head a shake.

"You're a shameless liar and we both know it. Look, Sherlock, I'm _not_ useful here. That doesn't mean not useful on the case. They'll have maps soon, if not already. And the bodies had to get into and out of the tunnels somewhere, which means they'd need to be transported." Sherlock raised an eyebrow, a familiar amused fondness glinting in grey eyes. "If we can map where these tunnels connected to other buildings in the area, maybe we can pull security footage and find a pattern of unusual vehicles. It's worth a shot."

"It most certainly is," Sherlock agreed.

"You can keep traipsing around down here," John said, ignoring the roll of the eyes at his use of Hassard's words, "and I can do something useful up there. You can text me incessantly, too."

"Yes, I'm sure the service down here is entirely reliable," Sherlock said dryly.

"You could always keep me in here," John replied, tapping an index finger against Sherlock's forehead, the flicker of surprise surprising him in return. It took a moment for realization to set in, making him grin again. "Oh, I see. You've already one. Well I hope he's every bit an annoying dick as the you who lives in mine."

"You have me in your head?" Sherlock asked.

"'Course I do, you stupid sod," John replied, trying to keep the gruff tone from his voice. "What do you think?"

"Rather a lot of things," Sherlock replied briskly.

"Ha," John muttered, lips twitching. "I'll just bet you do. Go be brilliant and dazzling and amazing. I'll do what I can to muddle through on my own."


	9. Chapter 9

"Our proverbial haystack," Lestrade said, sweeping an arm to encompass the whole room.

John lifted his eyebrows at the mess of maps, schematics, and blueprints littering the conference room table. Two constables were already buried in notes and curling sheets of paper, one of them deigning to spare him a glance and a wan, tired smile.

"Looks like I have my work cut out for me," he commented, glancing back at Lestrade.

"Wish I could say the same," the DI sighed. "Wertz," he caught a passing PC, "grab us a couple of coffees. Black and…"

"Cream, no sugar," John supplied. "Nothing from the guard?"

"An easy mark, thought it was going to be a theft. Someone promised him a cut of the profits – 'course there weren't any, but he insists he didn't know that. Had no idea the target was Douglas, was just chatted up by a woman in a pub."

"You're not serious," John groaned.

"Wish I wasn't," Lestrade said. "Like I said, easy mark. Not the kind of man who gets out or meets many women. Hell, probably doesn't meet _anyone_. He says he never met whoever was supposed to be running the job. I'd bet my badge one of them was the fake courier Mycroft caught on the surveillance feed. It would help if we knew who he was, but the guard didn't recognize him. I'd almost feel sorry for him – except it's not him in a morgue, or up all bloody night poring over maps or tromping through tunnels."

"I don't think Sherlock minds that bit," John said dryly.

"I mind when people trade in lives like they were bargaining chips," Lestrade replied, a hard edge in his voice. "Coffee. Good. Here you go. It's swill but it does the trick." He plucked two mugs from the PC, passing one off to John. "Constable Tema will get you set up," he continued, nodding at the woman who had given John the bare greeting. "Let you know what you're looking at – or what we think you're looking at anyway. Good luck. You'll need it."

* * *

Sherlock checked his phone discreetly, unsurprised by the lack of service he'd predicted, but somewhat disappointed. If he'd been in the mood to consider ever having a conversation with Mycroft again, he would have made a note to mention it. As he was not, he did not.

With a quiet sigh, he tucked the phone back into his breast pocket beneath the forensics suit, zipping back up conscientiously. It wasn't him contaminating the crime scene that worried him, but the crime scene contaminating him. He'd had enough cause to be grateful for the hooded suit already, damp as it was down here, and he had no desire to ruin his shirt.

It was one of John's favourites.

"Ready?" Hassard asked, materializing beside him.

"I was ready half an hour ago," Sherlock replied coolly, which earned him little more than a raised eyebrow in response.

"John was in the military. You should know that you don't send the officers in first."

"I'm not an officer," he pointed out.

"Just as well," she said with a quick grin that was far too cheeky for his liking. "But I promised John I'd keep you safe."

Sherlock snorted. _Safe_. Safe was boring. John knew that.

And yet, he was securely tucked away in the Yard. Drowning in maps and charts presented no real threat to life or limb, and Sherlock couldn't entirely deny the relief he felt at knowing that John currently out of harm's way. That, even though he was out of immediate reach by phone, this wasn't Wales. He knew precisely where John was, and trusted Lestrade's abilities well enough – even if he'd never confess to it.

Lestrade had never met the Woman, but he'd been subject to her schemes. He'd been there. He understood.

It was why John would be well guarded, even in the security of the Yard.

It was why Sherlock was now in the company of a cautious DI, his own safety tediously assured – or at least as much as he was willing to tolerate. It chafed, but less so than the anger that fuelled an ever-burning furnace, kept so tenuously under control that it terrified him, because there was no margin for error.

Not here, not now.

Nothing could be taken for granted. The city had become a battlefield he didn't recognize. One he thought he'd reclaimed after nine long months of exile, only to find himself exiled again, against his will, without contacts or resources, for three gruelling days.

London wasn't his own anymore. It had changed, shadows shifting, dismantling what he'd known.

The insult burned almost as brightly as the rage for John – who was _she_ to take what was his?

To pluck him from _his_ city, from his _John_, scattering the three of them like leaves in the wind, and how dare she do _this _– not just the murders but the instability, this constant questioning of his own mind and depriving him of John's presence, the two things he needed to trust without doubt. The only things he cherished, that made him _him_, that gave him meaning and purpose and focus.

It was a game, one she'd begun, but he wouldn't play the role she'd devised for him. Not this time. Whatever her rules were, they didn't matter.

She'd broken the only one that mattered to him. Broken it so carelessly that it had broken John. A dark line on an x-ray. The offensive need to adjust their lives to accommodate an injury that should be nothing more than the occasional passing annoyance. The insulting loss of John's assistance, his company, and his expertise. The doubt that had rooted in John's mind that had no place, that crowded their flat.

"Coming?" Hassard asked, her voice like a taut line back to the present, and whatever he wrestled back under control in the space of a breath, he saw reflected in her eyes. Different reasons, the same hot rage burning as energy when other reserves were running low.

Sherlock gave a curt nod, gesturing for Hassard to lead the way. She wasn't about to let him go first, and it was simpler to let her define the path while he focussed on the details – repeating patterns on the walls, the bends and curves in the tunnel as it circumvented other structures unseen and unknown. Access tunnels for the tubes, most likely. Sewers, utility pipes, basements. The pattern was memorized, compared to the original one he'd recorded. No discrepancies found, and no new data presented itself until they were stepping off the ladder into the lower tunnel.

Shift in the air currents – it was colder down here, but drier. A larger, more open space, and a moment with his eyes closed let Sherlock feel a distant rumble through his feet. Tube some distance below them. Likely accessible from here if one knew where to look, but he shelved the possibility for now. Too difficult to get a body onto public transit without notice (he ignored John's cheeky grin in his mind at the memory of the time he'd learned _that_ from experience). No station in the immediate vicinity either; tricky to walk through a tube tunnel with its live rails carrying the dead weight of a fully grown adult man.

The distant sound of water – not a torrent, more of a trickle, like a small stream. Run-off from some drain pipe, no doubt. It lent a dampness to the atmosphere, but only slightly; enough to smell it if he inhaled deeply, not quite enough to feel it. There was something on the air, almost spicy, like pine in the underground breeze. Movement and space were the culprits, not the true freshness of unfettered air from the surface.

Cold, dry. Ideal for storage of a body, but the air carried no hint of decay. Not human decay. A hint of mouldiness beneath everything, not unexpected.

They were alone – as alone as could be with nearly the entirety of a police squad. He scanned the shadows not illuminated by the irritating floodlights; in London's underground, this would be a veritable palace, but it was uninhabited.

At the moment.

Signs of recent life remained. The place had been abandoned, apparently in a hurry. That had to have been within the last two days; any longer, and this place would begin to fill up again, bodies or not. The police presence would delay any return, but only briefly.

"No muddy footprints," Sherlock said. "Mud from above would track down, and there's not much of it down here to cover it. They'd have been prepared for that."

"Change of shoes?" Hassard asked.

"Or shoe covers," he replied, gesturing to the ones they were wearing. "No drag marks either, but they wouldn't have to drag Douglas down here. No need to cover footprints, not with dry soles on a dry surface. There may still be something…"

"But with all the other footprints, it's hard to tell," Hassard replied with a shrug.

"Precisely. Dragging him would give their path away."

"We have two choices," she said.

"That we know of," Sherlock corrected, earning a concurring, if irritated, huff.

"That way leads back toward the building we've just come from," she said, pointing to their right. Sherlock raised an eyebrow, and Hassard shot him an annoyed look. "What, because you're the only one with a sense of direction?"

"It might lead that way, but it doesn't connect to Douglas' building."

"Yeah, I thought of that," she snapped, then sighed, giving her head a small shake. "If we knew where the entrances were, we could have teams working their way toward each other. We're just fumbling in the dark down here."

"Then let's fumble left," Sherlock replied.

"Guessing?" Hassard asked.

"Hardly," Sherlock sniffed. "There's water to our right in the distance, no indication of that to our left. Path of least resistance. Useful when carrying a corpse."

"Right," Hassard agreed. "Let's go."

* * *

_What the hell _am_ I looking at?_

The maps stared back at him mutely, an incomprehensible maze of lines and angles that might as well have been a foreign language. John tapped the pencil in his left hand lightly against the sheet in front of him. He'd removed his sling carefully, with Constable Tema's help – it was either that or be unable to write properly. The two PCs were marking up the maps spread out across the table; he took it as implicit permission to do the same.

The city map was simple to understand, of course, but in trying to switch between the familiar, almost cartoonish, aerial view to the diagrams and schematics written in the languages of architects and engineers, the information drained away like water through clenched fingers. Each time he thought he had a starting point, he lost it down the line, leaving him to backtrack until he wasn't sure which way was up.

_Sherlock'd go through this in a shot_, John thought, giving his head a minute shake, mindful of the injured muscles on his left side.

_But I'm a proper genius_, his partner's voice echoed in his head, and John just managed to restrain an aggravated sigh that would give the constables the wrong idea.

_Christ I hope your version of me is ten times as annoying as you are_, he replied, lips twitching as he tried. _Got any actual useful advice?_

_You're looking at it all wrong._

Sherlock's voice had an odd harmonic that made John frown and sit back in his chair. The change in perspective did nothing; he leaned forward, shifting his left arm from the table to avoid putting pressure on it. Still nothing. He flipped the nearest map around, looking at it upside down. He stood, taking several steps back, then climbed onto his chair, drawing puzzled stares from both constables.

John shrugged his right shoulder slightly, reclaiming his seat.

The maps sat silently, defying him to understand them.

_How am I looking at it wrong?_ he asked himself, chewing absently on his lower lip. He turned Sherlock's words over in his head, trying to break down the meaning, distracted more by the way Sherlock had sounded. Not exactly right, as though it wasn't him – or John's version of him – speaking. Voice modulated, somehow. Or combined.

_Focus, Watson._

The sudden clarity startled him; it _hadn't_ been Sherlock's voice. Not entirely. It had been mixed with the sound of his own.

John held himself still, breathing slowly and deliberately, eyes flickering over the maps. He pushed the city map away, keeping the others were they where.

And saw it.

Sherlock had been right – he had been looking at it the wrong way.

He'd been trying to follow the streets, match the tunnels up with a grid above ground that had little or nothing to do with what lay beneath the surface. The roads and buildings were the city's skin, the tunnels – any of them – that ran below its blood vessels and nervous system. They _were_ connected, but trying to impose one map on the other wasn't going to work.

He needed to look at it like a surgeon.

John pulled the aerial map back toward him, circled Douglas' building as a starting point. With the pencil taking the place of scalpel and tweezers, he set to work.

* * *

The presence of accompanying constables annoyed him; Sherlock ignored them in retaliation and out of habit. Tuned his mind to Hassard's voice and no others. She was clever enough, he supposed, but stubborn in that familiar way of a high ranking police officer who also happened to be an eldest child.

_Not as bad as Mycroft_, his mental John pointed out.

_Shut up,_ Sherlock replied, no real bite to his tone, and his image of John grinned. _And she's far worse than Lestrade._

_You wouldn't say that if Greg were there._

_I thought it was Grant_.

_You're hopeless_, John said fondly, then subsided as Sherlock refocused, picking his way carefully through the shadows. They'd left the floodlights well behind, torches and headlamps lighting their path imperfectly. Keeping close to one side freed him from the immediate presence of any of the PCs, let him gauge the history scrawled on the walls. The brick and mortar itself spoke of age despite the more recent artistic additions. Beneath those, here and there, he found hints of older inscriptions.

"It was a bomb shelter," he said, voice carrying enough in the enclosed space to catch the attention of one or two constables, and Hassard. She crouched next to him, headlamp giving more illumination to the date scratched into the brick.

"That means there must be an exit to the surface."

"Not necessarily," Sherlock replied. "Not anymore."

"Good point," she sighed. "Let's keep moving."

The ground gave nothing away; occasional silent, painted faces gazed back at him from the wall. Hassard had charged forensics with documenting the graffiti; they'd do a thorough job but John would have done better. The officers would see nothing of value in evidence unrelated to the crime; John would look for that value, even if it weren't there.

_John's still on the case_, he argued with himself. _It hardly matters that he's not here_. The doctor's help above ground was equally valuable as his help down here would have been – perhaps more so. It was perfectly reasonably they split up to cover more ground – both figuratively and literally. They were bound to accomplish more that way.

Sherlock didn't believe himself.

_I did say you were a liar_, his internal John pointed out. Sherlock scowled, expression lost in the darkness.

_Are you going to let me work?_ he demanded, refocusing, marking the position of the police officers with little more effort than it took to gauge his own physical presence. Remarkable how that awareness included John – or the lack of John. It always had, but had become more pronounced, as if better knowing John physically made it easier to understand how he fit into the space around him.

How _they_ fit together. Proximity and displayed affection depended on the situation but never really distanced despite the presence of other people or clothing. How it could be both distracting and sustaining at the same time?

_Shut up_, he repeated when John drew an inward breath to make a mocking comment.

A shift in the darkness caught Sherlock's eye, and the irritation at John's absence and his inescapable mental presence subsumed by sudden concentration.

_Don't look behind you_, he thought, incongruously.

The beam from his headlamp followed his gaze to the far wall, casting mortar into faint shadow between the brick, illuminating the change in texture he thought he'd seen. Brick to lattice: a small grate obscured a dark space cut into the wall, low enough that it would pass for a storm drain at first glance – but the telltale signs of water were missing. No excessive dampness on the worn concrete around it, no mineral or chemical stains, no smell of mould.

"Amanda," he called, a beam of light swinging back toward him as he crossed the tunnel carefully, eyes flickering over the ground, ensuring he disturbed nothing. At his pointed direction, her light joined his. Footsteps died as the rest of the small team stopped at her instructions, more light cast their way as they crouched. The metal was free of any rust, and the grate swung easily in Sherlock's light grip, no catch or creak of protest from the hinges.

Without giving the DI time to protest, Sherlock was flat on his stomach, snaking into the narrow space, the light from his headlamp suddenly much brighter with something to confine it. A resigned, impatient sigh came from behind him, but Hassard said nothing beyond a cursory order to be careful. Sherlock grunted a vague acknowledgement, pulling himself in further, torch picking up the edges of what he'd suspect must be there.

The small tunnel was deeper than he'd expected, deep enough to push something back out of reach of the casual viewer with a torch. Deeper than the length of his body, tucked away almost neatly. Contained, hidden, and dry. Sherlock wormed his way in closer, holding his breath. Ascertaining what he already knew, tracing familiar plastic patterns.

He raised his eyes toward the low ceiling. A descent from the lofty office with its view of the city, a careful movement down into a small, underground space. One victim had stood on the top of the world, the other had moved below it. In death, Sarraf had climbed to heights he hadn't in life.

_Oh yes, very clever_, Sherlock thought, nostrils flaring on a sharp exhale, scowl unseen in the darkness.

"Anything?" Hassard's voice called behind him. Sherlock pushed himself backwards, sucking in a deep grateful gulp of air when he re-emerged into the main tunnel. Not so terrible a smell – not after so short a time – but the air in there was trapped, more pungent.

"Yes," he replied. "An occupied body bag. Unless I'm very much mistaken, we've just found the real Richard Douglas."


	10. Chapter 10

"I think I've got something."

Lestrade managed to clear a space on his desk the moment before the map was spread out, a maze of lines and symbols accentuated by red pen ink and hastily jotted notes.

"Here," John said, drawing a circle around a pre-existing one, "is Douglas' office building." The pen traced down alongside another line; the doctor wasn't wearing his sling, and Lestrade half wondered if he should say something – if only to offset an irate Sherlock later on – but John _was _a doctor. He ought to know what he was doing.

He certainly seemed to now.

"This," John continued, "is the tunnel from the parking garage, and it goes down here where we found the ladder. It looks like there's a bunch of other structures in this area, including tube lines and access tunnels, and this one may connect to those, but it also connects here," he drew a line quickly, zig-zagging slightly, to match with another circle, "here, and here." He repeated the process twice more.

"Three other buildings," Lestrade said. "How the hell did you–"

John grinned fiercely.

"You'd be surprised how useful a medical degree can be. The nervous system isn't an easy thing to navigate," he said, and Lestrade huffed a sigh. "The tunnels connect to a bank and two office buildings."

The bank set off warning sirens in his brain, and any other time, Lestrade would have given it priority, but accessing the tunnels had been to move bodies in and out, not money. Something like that wouldn't go unnoticed in a bank.

"Let's find out which one has underground parking," he said.

* * *

The handful of officers had become a swarm, with the forensics team roping off the area, adding photograph flashes to the bright lights that had been hurriedly installed. Donovan had come and gone, dispatched to the surface to report Douglas' recovery once the body bag had been carefully withdrawn from its small tunnel, after the coroner's team finally arrived, and the man inside exposed. Sherlock had observed expressions rather than the corpse; a quick glance had confirmed the identity, but Hassard and Donovan had been careful about the identification. Both of them deliberately blank, impassive. Until their eyes met, briefly, over the body, and Donovan was gone to carry out her orders.

Sherlock repressed a brittle, triumphant smile, standing back, biding his time as Hassard directed the scene. Edging away wouldn't work – she had to come to him, not after him.

Keeping out of the way was tedious, but there was little enough to work with down here and _this_ wasn't the crime scene. Douglas had been hidden here to be found – and the realization tempted him to stop, to walk away from the case without a backward glance, to collect his John and return to Baker Street.

_Don't look behind you_.

_No_, he thought, another smile curling on his lips, cold and sharp, more knife's edge than humour. He would not jump at shadows, nor would he go back the way he'd came. Simplicity was deceptive, and he would not be blinded, not even down here in the darkness.

"There's still another end," he murmured when Hassard finally approached him.

"What?" she asked, features creasing into a frown.

"Where they came in with Sarraf's body."

"We don't even know that they did," she sighed.

"Of course we do," Sherlock snapped. "He was frozen, and thawed slowly. You saw that grate. Recently replaced, small spaces in the lattice. _Very_ small. That tunnel is contained, in good repair. An ideal place to store a body – and engineered to be so. No rats. But his suit still smelled damp, and the air in there was confined. Damper than the air out here."

"Fine," Hassard said. "But there's no reason to assume they didn't bring him in the same way they brought Douglas."

"Douglas was moved from inside his own building. Sarraf was moved in from outside. They may have had access to the security grid in the building, but what about those on the streets? An unfamiliar vehicle arriving at an odd hour? We could track that."

"Unless they made a pattern of it."

"Effort," Sherlock sighed. "Less of it required to find a second entry point than to evade all the external CCTV cameras. The door to the parking garage was bricked up on this end. Who says they all are? Find one that isn't, and all they'd need is access to the garage and time enough to figure out where the camera blind spots are. Presuming the other garage has cameras."

"Presuming there _are_ other garages," Hassard said.

"In this area of the city?" Sherlock replied. "Where else would you park?"

She wavered, hesitating as responsibility warred with professional curiosity, and Sherlock caught the moment of acquiescence before she did, keeping a triumphant smile to himself.

"Two men are dead, Inspector," he said, tipping the balance further in his favour.

"You don't have to remind me," she snapped. "Let's keep it at only two, shall we? You stay right here and don't slip off." Sherlock rolled his eyes but deigned to wait as she round up a constable to come with them and left another in charge until Donovan returned.

"I hope you're right," Hassard said, shooting him a dark look as they left the lights behind.

"Aren't I always?" Sherlock sniffed, ignoring the faint huff in response.

It was easier to concentrate with the babble of voices fading behind them, Hassard and the constable silent in the near-darkness. Bobbing headlamps cast imperfect light in front of them, forcing his other senses back for the forefront. Simple enough to attune himself to the tunnel again, watching for signs of human passage, hearing only the quiet skittering of small animals trying to evade the torches.

He felt the change before he saw it, the air shifting, carrying something else on it. New scents that didn't belong down here, perhaps faint noises on the edges of his hearing. Not the dampness of the tunnel connected to Douglas' building, but the opposite. Drier, less stagnant.

A familiar space, not one that had been sealed off and forgotten by most of the world.

"Amanda." The word stopped both Hassard and the constable, and Sherlock tilted his head back, beam from the headlamp illuminating the ladder that led up past an open hatch. Without awaiting her permission, he pulled himself up, ignoring the sound of his name being called in warning, and clambered up the ladder easily, slowing as he reached the opening.

The space felt smaller, suspicion confirmed by the bottom of the stairs caught in his light after only a few steps. Sherlock kept an ear tuned to the sounds of Hassard and the constable climbing up after him, and took stock of his surroundings – this was a used space, cluttered by equipment and not by graffiti. Footprints everywhere – probably the ones they were looking for, but impossible to discern amidst all the others – and the equipment here hadn't been abandoned, judging by the outlines on the concrete floor where things had clearly been moved.

"The hatch has a lock on it," Hassard said. "Or it did, until it was broken."

Sherlock nodded vaguely, filing the information away. It meant the killers had reliable access on this side, too. Possibly another accomplice, more likely working knowledge of the schedule that brought people down here. Fewer links in the chain.

"Well," Hassard said, stepping up beside him, "let's see if our luck holds out, shall we?"

* * *

"It's just storage." The protest from the beleaguered guard beginning to grate on John's nerves after the third time.

"It's never _just_ anything," Lestrade muttered in reply – John was sure he wasn't imagining the cynical irritation in the DI's voice – as he juggled the keys, fitting one into a padlock.

The click as it was opened made John's hair stand up on end – _no_, he realized, it wasn't the lock opening. There had been something else behind the noise, something Lestrade had heard too, and the guard, because they froze in unison with him, John's good hand raised to signal a stop.

_Rats_, he thought, but years in the army had taught him to detect the difference between human and animal noises, and this had a distinct – and worrying – human quality to it. Like footsteps on creaking metal stairs.

He was holding his breath, aware of it only when Lestrade exhaled slowly.

"This is Detective Inspector Hassard with the Metropolitan Police!" a voice called through the metal barrier. "Whoever's on the other side of this door, I need you to identify yourself and open it – _slowly_!"

"Bloody hell!" Lestrade swore. "Amanda?"

There was a pause, Lestrade meeting his eyes incredulously, then two voices replied, mingling with one another:

"Greg?"

"_Lestrade?_"

"Jesus Christ," John muttered. "Sherlock?"

"We could stand here calling one another's names," Sherlock snapped, and John grinned at the abrupt note of impatience, "or you could put yourself to good use and open the damn door!"

"I thought he was supposed to consult for us," Lestrade muttered, undoing the next padlock, then fitting the key into the lock on the door's handle, "not order us around."

"Same thing, with Sherlock," John replied.

"I _can_ hear you," an affronted baritone said as Lestrade swung the door open. Three faces greeted them, Sherlock looking as cool and superior as expected, Hassard looking both amused and annoyed, and a constable John didn't recognize looking just as bemused as the security guard.

"This is a coincidence," Lestrade remarked.

"Hardly," Sherlock sniffed. "We were both looking for the same place. What took you so long?"

"Us?" Lestrade asked. "What about you?"

"Aren't you people supposed to talk to each other?" Sherlock demanded. "We were busy." John saw Hassard roll her eyes, shoulders moving with a soft sigh.

"Donovan's probably trying to get ahold of you," she said to Lestrade. "We've found Richard Douglas."

* * *

Sherlock insisted John look at the body, so he did, half wondering if it was becoming a necessary ritual for the detective, like his sock index or the way he colour coded his shirts hanging in the closet.

He was certain the man was dead, but checked his assessment carefully nonetheless. He'd seen too many hypothermia victims in his time to write anyone off so easily – not to mention he knew at least two people who were prone to suddenly coming back to life.

He doubted Douglas was going to, not if the same poison that had killed Sarraf had found its way to him, too.

_Belladonna_, he thought, giving his head a shake. _Who's bloody idea was that, I wonder?_

Lestrade and Hassard took his word for it, and John knew Sherlock was halfway offended that the medical examiner didn't need the confirmation, but he didn't care. She had a job to, and he was happy to let her have it. The cold and the damp were beginning to seep into his shoulder, and the caffeine from the coffee was wearing off.

"We'll need the surveillance tapes from this building," Sherlock was saying as Douglas was carefully loaded into the waiting ambulance. John caught Lestrade beginning to shake his head, but Sherlock ignored it – as usual – ploughing ahead. "And the surrounding buildings – any views of the street that show the entrance and exit. Key card scans from the lot, particularly anything unusual within the past week or so that could raise questions. We're looking for someone without a pattern, or perhaps a new established pattern–"

"Right now, we're not looking for anything," Lestrade snapped, stopping Sherlock up short. John fought a smile at his partner's momentary stunned silence, and watched the DI grab the opportunity before Sherlock could draw a breath. "We have the body, but it still needs to be autopsied. We have two entry points – or an entry and exit, whatever you want to call it. We have techs for this kind of things, Sherlock, _and_ we're done for the night."

"Done?" Sherlock snapped. "What do you mean, done?"

"I mean d-o-n-e," Lestrade replied. "Done. It's been," he checked his watch, "twenty hours since we were called out on this. I realize you never sleep, but the rest of us do."

"We don't have time–"

"Right now we do, yeah. We have the bodies."

"The suspects–"

"You do realize there are more than three people working for the Met, right? That we don't keep regular hours, and other people can take over for a bit?"

"Other people are–"

"Idiots. Yeah. I know. Believe me, you're pretty damn clear on that point. But since we're _all_ idiots, it shouldn't really matter which of us are working, right?"

John saw Hassard give a wan smile as Sherlock huffed and rolled his eyes.

"Go home," Lestrade said. "Sleep. Or do whatever it is you do in place of sleep. We'll have plenty for you to do tomorrow."

"You can't–" Sherlock began, pursing his lips angrily when John cut him off by clearing his throat softly. He subsided, grudgingly, and John wasn't surprised when the subject came up almost immediately in the cab.

"Sleep," the detective mutter derisively, nostrils flaring at John's small smile.

"Some of us do, you know. Even you've been known to, on occasion."

"We have a _case_, John! There's no time to waste dithering in bed!"

"Is that really a waste of your time?" John asked, ignoring the raised eyebrows from the cabbie in the rear-view mirror. Sherlock rolled his eyes, making an impatient gesture that had John grinning. "Relax," the doctor said. "Lestrade can't actually make you sleep, and I won't try. You can lead a horse to water and all that. Although I'd feel better if you had some actual water to drink. And maybe something to eat."

Sherlock huffed again, but the sound had a consenting note to it, and John recognized it as compromise, Sherlock Holmes style. He'd have some fuel in him, at least, and he could collapse after the case and sleep for over half a day – or he'd submit to at least a few hours if he reached John's fifty-two hour limit.

It was one thing to let Sherlock _be_ Sherlock; it was another to have to sedate him because he'd gone without sleep so long that being awake was a habit he couldn't break.

"Anyway," John said as Sherlock conscientiously opened the front door for him as the cab pulled back into traffic, "you don't need the Met to hack into the CCTV cameras, and it'll give you something to do."

The knowing smirk Sherlock cast over his shoulder vanished when the detective's eyes flickered to something beside him, and it took John a moment to remember he'd left bags there.

"It's–" he began as Sherlock released the door behind him, letting it swing closed to cut them off from the street.

"Her clothing," the detective replied without looking up.

"Yeah," John said, closing his eyes briefly and cursing his own stupidity. "Sherlock– Christ. I'm sorry. I just thought– I needed something to do and I thought her clothes… Neither of us can use them, and there are people who can."

"Yes, of course," Sherlock replied, and John could hear the utter practicality in his voice, but there were faint shadows around his eyes, sobering his expression in the dim common corridor light.

"One bag is for your homeless network," John said, and felt it lacked completely in any relevance. "I'm sorry. I should have asked."

"Why should you ask?" Sherlock replied. "They're your things now."

"They're _our_ things," John stressed. Spreading the responsibility between them made it so much easier – and John knew without admitting it, even really to himself, it was because then neither of them needed to be the one making all the decisions.

"As you said, her clothes aren't useful to us."

"I still should have warned you," John said. "I needed something to do. I'll put the bags back in her flat."

"John," Sherlock sighed, one hand curling around John's good arm. "It's all right. It needed to be done. I do know a lot of people who will benefit from it." He hesitated, grey eyes flickering over John's face. "Thank you."

John nodded mechanically, surprised to feel the sudden, brief press of lips on his cheek, and Sherlock was looking abashed – almost defiantly so – as if caught his with hand in a sweets jar. John kissed him in return, not as quickly and on the lips.

"All right?" he asked.

The corners of Sherlock's lips twitched, a glimmer in his eyes chasing away the light shadows.

"All right," he agreed.


End file.
